Female Headers for Raspberry PI 2

by mosaicmap

1.8K173

Intro: Female Headers for Raspberry PI 2

Pi's male headers are a bit unpractical for using with breadboard, in my opinion. I use Arduino and breadboard, so I use male jumpers most of the time. With Pi I need to use male-to-female jumpers.

I looked around for a solution, but I found only stuff like this: http://www.dx.com/p/solderless-400-point-breadboard-40pin-cable-40pin-gpio-for-raspberry-pi-b-359063 which is also unpractical, in my opinion.

I think a simple male-to-female adapter is the best choice.

Things that you will need:

  • 2x forty pin dual line female headers.
  • Printer
  • Cutter
  • Glue

STEP 1: Soldering

You shoudn't solder two pins longer that a few seconds, because you can melt plastic inside the headers.

After soldering, make sure that there are no short-circuited pins.

STEP 2: Labels

Another advantage of female headers is that they can be labeled. I made a labels in the GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) (see XCF attachment)

Print the PDF (see PDF attachment) on A4 paper format without scaling.

Cut printed labels and glue them on the headers.

I have no color printer, so I made coloring with color pencils. But you can make labels as you like...

And that's all.

3 Comments

MikB 9 years ago

Handy tip. Much better than the various "winding wire round a pin and hoping" techniques!

"You shoudn't solder two pins longer that a few seconds, because you can melt plastic inside the headers."

1) If the pins are nice and bright and shiny, you shouldn't need longer than a few seconds, otherwise refine your soldering skills elsewhere less critical :)

2) To combat the melting-connector problem, put a plug/header strip into the sockets. This is an old trick -- DIN connectors (e.g. the older 3-5-7 pin audio ones, and the smaller PS-2 mouse/S-Video MINIDIN) tend to melt and have pins go out of line, if you don't get in and out quickly. So mate the two halves together and it holds it all still. So even if the plastic does melt a little, nothing moves.

tomatoskins 9 years ago

This is so handy! Thanks for sharing!