#12 Five Tricks for working with Dupont wires 

I'm getting back to electronics after about 25 years because I'm trying to teach my little son a few things. I seemed a little lost with the change that has happened. Your advice is fantastic and I found the second half after 3:00minutes more helpful. Thanks!

Literally the most useful video I have watched in a while. And 3 yrs after it was made. Brilliant. Thank you Andreas

Its funny how the simplest solution is always the best solution, Thank you for your time & knowledge... Edward, Sydney Australia

I have been surfing around for Arduino related content and every time I start watching a video or two, I end up finding one from your channel. From Lora Gateways to Dupont Wires, from Crimper tools to anything. I always find the info I am looking for at your channel. For short, I want to thank you for your great work. I am big fan, and I wish you health and strength to make many more useful videos for the community. Thank you so much the guy with swiss accent :)

Thank you so much for sharing time saving tips. You earned that knowledge; thank you for passing it along. The empty shell tip is great.

Regarding the colors : most people never realize this, but the multi-color ribbon cable uses the same color code as resistors. It's a good thing to remember if you're numbering your wires and/or use them in a certain order.

Glad I came by. Two videos so far and I will definitely watch more.

Great advice and tips, very helpful. Thank you

You are one smart cookie! Great ideas - I show you videos often to my electronics friends! Thanks again Andreas!

Thank you for the great tips and the time you put into making this video. You have given me some good ideas.

Thank you for the good tips with empty shells! Ordered them immedeatly.

Nice to find another DuPont wire enthusiast! Good tips.

Love the 3rd tip!! A big thank-you and keep up the great channel!!

That is a really useful video, I never realised you can buy empty shells. Many thanks for posting. Bob

Just about to wire up a project for a friend. This vid very helpful on how to produce a neat job. Thank you.

This is exactly the lesson I needed, many thanks.

Appreciate the channel of the guy with sweet Swiss accent !!!

Great tips and still relevant today. Cheers

I use transparent tape to stick dupont headers in one row and even 2 rows together. To do so, i first attach the dupont wires on the pin row (preferred with black wire on GND) and than wrap tape around. This holds them amazingly good together and allow easy plug- and unpluging. I like the super glue idea for permanent cable preparation! Thanks for sharing Andreas!

Thank you for this video! I have been making my own dupont connectors and it is so hard and time consuming to get them perfect. I will use your tips #2+#3 and just buy a bunch of pre-made wires and replace the ends.

Very helpful tips, thank you so much for sharing! I learned a lot from you!

Good job. Great video. You are a good instructor.

.Another good video with basic useful tips. Thank you.

Thanks for sharing this video and your insights. Greatly appreciated. I’m just beginning with Arduino and experimenting.

Great tips. Shall be adopted. Thank you.

Thank you Andreas for this and all your other great and helpful videos!

Simple essential tips. Very useful & clear.

A few great tips there. Thank you!

Cool tips - I was looking for something like the empty shells but had no idea where to start looking!

Good tips. Thanks. I also had the problem of always running low on black or red wires. I went online and was able to find packages of red and packages of black duponts. I didn't find many size options, but what I found pretty much solved my issues. Gluing the empties together was an awesome idea.👍🏻

Useful tips! Thanks for sharing, Guy With Swiss Accent!

Brilliant video mate thanks it's a good reference source for the likes of myself new to the wire world

Thank you for your helpful tricks!

Hey... good stuff! Oddly all these tips cover problems I've been having and are just sorting out now. Being able to color code my rats nest would be the 1st big step along with wires of non-random length. I especially like how with a bit of care the dupont modules can be re-used.

Good advice, Andreas!

Very Helpful ideas! Thanks!

Genius: Thanks so much. I like the idea of buying empty shells!

Thanks a lot. A real wisdom nugget only experience can teach,, many thanks

A lot of useful tips! Thanks A lot !

Very very helpful. Thank you so much. - Das, Calcutta, India

Thank you for this useful TIps...

awesome! loved the intro!

Brillant tips and methods, thanks

thanks! this has been very helpful!

Trick n°3 is really really great thanks!!

very practical and great tips

This single video changed the way I did my prototypes forever. Use to have 4 problems when things didn't work (i) incorrect wiring (ii) software problems (iii) impossible expectations of a circuit (iv) Bad connections. I have now basically got rid of (iv) because I now only use dupont cables organised nicely and I always have black for GND and red or orange for power. I only have the female ones and make all the headers male. For me, works well. The other thing is, I'm just terrible at crimping my own so I buy the ready crimped ones from China. The great thing is with care (and a good pair of tweezers) can take the cable out of housing and re-use and swap around. One example of use is I may have a 2 pin connector and a 6 pin connector that comes from the MCU and goes into a 8 pin connector on the device as 2 are N/C. I found if you can get 2+ connections together they prevent a lot of wobble and drama. I have an OV7670 camera module that has 20 pins, with single wires this was basically impossible to wire. With organised dupont it's so much easier and robust. Also, the cost of the cable from China is basically no more expensive with the housing than without and given the time saved trying to crimp... you're well ahead.

Handy tips. Thanks!

as usual, "guy with a swiss accent", you simply peddle great info. simple, to the point, and, that hallmark of good info, seems pretty damned obvious AFTER you're told, lol. kudos, and a new subscriber

You could also use green for ground. It's easy to remember because the first letters are the same, and green is often use to represent Earth in AC power circuit wiring.

Great tips, thank you!!!

Very helpful. Thanks!

Eternal useful info 👍😊

Very interesting, I also started running low of black and red wires and started using blues as alternative ground or negative color and orange as alternative positive supply voltage. I'm currently still mostly breadboards so I'll have to add shells to my next aliexpress order. I already get the large breakaway pin headers so I can have any length I need and double up for double rows so I might add well get started with shells. With multiple projects using wires I also got a kit of assorted color solid core wires and use those in breadboards for exact length very clean and easy to see connections between components. It actually increases visual troubleshooting a noticeable amount and having long wires everywhere on breadboards I've found I make more mistakes at times so I'd add on that tip, real shorts flat against the breadboard surface wire connections with solid cores to replace long dupont wires with pin connectors.

Great tips! Subscribed for more tips.

Thanks Andreas. I got a few new tips here. I ordered some shells (a full kit for dupoint). That will make my STM32 STLink headers more tolerable :) A problem I have with dupoints and breadboards.... well they tend to spread the jaws of the breadboard open just far enough to mean the normal steel pin breadboard jumpers get dodgy connections. As a tip I would like to share. Projects which become more than temporary, you don't need to learn how to do full component based PCBs. You can quickly drop some male and female headers onto a PCB and plug modules into it. Makes things a lot easier when you project grows dozens of different modules and wires. For example... you don't need to learn how to layout an Arduino IC ... just put female pin headers on teh PCB and plug the whole Nano into it. :)

thanks for those tips!

Andreas. Thank you thos were actually very helpfull.

This is so helpful 🙏🏻

vert useful tricks! thanks

I'll be using your tip on using blank connectors, thanks

very great tips.

Awesome stuff

Very helpful! Thank ou!

Trick no. 4 was exactly what I was looking for but unfortunately I don't have a solder gun at home so rip. But these tips are great, Guy with a Swiss accent! Thankyou so much!

Very useful thanks

Thank you, didn't think of making a custom lead for the esp

Useful, thank you

nice videoes. thanks for sharing. it is handy.

Super useful!

oh... wow this is wonderful trick.... the shells are great cheat sheet.... i burnt one of my arduino last month... i could avoid them in future... thanks for this simple video.

Well done! Thank you for the clear information. +Subscribed

nice tips

you are the best thank you very much...

How about creating a gofundme campaign asking dupont (or whoever makes them) to produce wires with 5 pairs of red and black wires to be used as needed? This can't be that hard! Great video Adnreas, thank you for the great content!

Good info.

Thank you so so much!!

Very useful.

Wonderful!!

When I populate a shell I make sure that the latches are visible (uppermost) when the cable is installed, this means you can check the pins are latched and you can put test probes on the pin if necessary. Mixing male & female pins means you can arrange them so that plugs & sockets cannot be connected to the wrong partner, or the wrong way round. When making my own cables I use 24AWG flexible silicone insulated wire, this reduces the strain on the connectors.

Thank you ! empty shells, I didn't know the name, i 3dprint something similar it was difficult, too tiny

Thank you, I have recently started playing with IOT and the most frustrating part was crimping wires,

NOICE, very handy. I like advice this this, ty muchly!!

I like the empty shell trick. I initially kept the cables in groups of 10, the colors match the resistor color code from 1 to 0(10) so it was easy to remember them by numbering. But is rare to use them in number order on a strip, so the resistor code is not that useful in many cases. So I prefer keeping strips of 20, 10, 5, 3, 2 and 1 and use the exact amount of wires I need.

Andreas, Thank-you for all your excellent tutorial videos, I have learned a great deal. I have had many years of bench experience and like you have used similar wire color coding schemes. The key point is to be consistent with the color code of all your projects. I have always used brown for low and blue for VCC, (my rationale ) brown = earth or ground, Blue = sky or high (for the VCC voltage) .I'm not sure if this conflicts with European ac standard though?

Oh... another tip. Dupoints are fine for test and development on BBs. For more permenant solutions, where you have the option, it's better to go to a more suitable connector, such as JST IDC or one of the more modern formats.

Thx good tips

Thanks.

Useful!

If you need more colors of ten, you can mark with nail varnish to the cables. You have a lot of two color cables or more. Red - yellow or orange - green examples. I have only four colors of cables but mixed 5 colors of nail varnish : I have different 20 colors with this way.

Danke, sehr schön. Bei mir ist weiss immer der Clock/SCL und gelb die zugehörigen Daten/SDA auf dem I2C-Bus. Die leeren Hüllen bestelle ich mir bald mal.

Regarding wire color, I always use an orange wire for I2C clock connection. I can remember this because of the movie A Clockwork Orange :-)

I use white alongside black for GND and save blue for signal wire.

I really enjoy your videos. They're very informative and you have a very charming accent. I'm having trouble with loose connections using dupont wires. In this particular instance, I'm connecting female dupont connectors to a DHT11. Sadly, the male is too small :-( , or the female is too large :-( . Is there anything I can do to make the connection more secure...aside from soldering connections?

thx alot

Thank you for sharing. (y)

perfect

Would like to see a good system for tagging/labeling individual patch wires. Right now, using freezer tape and a sharpie -- ugly.

Hello Andreas, congratulations for your videos. I've been learning a lot from them! Saw in this video that you used a cable stripper. I have one but it doesn't work well with thin gauges like the Dupont wires. Are you happy with yours? If so, can you give me the link where you bought it? Best Regards, Ildefonso

Quality ! Lower and lower after each buy and when I start prototyping something, I get a new pack of wires because the old one (male) are fine, but female connections wear out very, very fast. Any advice which one to buy now ?