Headers. (First!)

Hey,
So I’ve had the Alchitry Cu for a few days. Great looking board, I’m excited to get the software up and running. Just one question. How do I connect anything to it? I don’t see my comfortable headers and I feel completely paralyzed.
Objectively, I know there is a solution to this problem and that it wouldn’t require too much work on my part, but is there a simple solution to go from the super whamadine headers to my comfortable breadboard friendly ones?
(P.S. I don’t hate the new headers, my Mojo has so many bent pins it’s starting to look like a porcupine.)
-Sam

Hey Sam,
Did you figure out those headers?
I guess the intended solution is to use the Alchitry Breakout.
This still has no easy way to just temporarily connect a few components, so my plan was to solder in some female pin headers like these ones.

Longer term, I will probably make up a template PCB “shield” which just has the pads laid out for the small male connectors, which can be bought on the store.
-Rory

That seems to be the intended solution. I was thinking the same. I have dozens of those headers, I wish there a quick and easy way to just connect a few wires since I didn’t get the Br. As good as the seem in principle, these headers definitely moved this board to the bottom of my todo list. I found that it is possible to wedge a standard square pin in the header, but they bridge multiple pins and you have to be very careful. Not recommended.

I also would just like to know a part number or type for these connectors.

What would you guys ideally like to see? The current intended solution is to solder female headers onto the Br element. We are going to order some 2x18 headers to bundle with them to make it easy.

Is having these pre-soldered important to you?

I’ve also thought about making a board with a long neck that could mate with a breadboard (two single rows 0.4" apart). This board would be really long though and I’m not sure it would be very popular.

I guess the only thing I really want is a part number for these connectors. It might also be worthwhile to sell the Au and Cu with the Br by default with an option to buy only the FPGA board. It really isn’t an issue, but it takes away some of the “new board” excitement when you realize you can’t plug it into anything and have to wait for shipping again.

Especially the shipping to other countries than US takes really much time until arrival. For example my board arrived yesterday after 20 days of travel :wink:

A male header to breadboard adapter cable would be useful.

The Au board headers each have 50 pins and an adapter cable could convert it to 2 rows of 25 pins at a width of 0.4" for connecting to the breadboard.

The advantage of this is that for a lot of simple prototyping, 36 (50 - 14) data pins are enough.
If not, then the user could attach additional adapter cables to the other headers.
This also solves the problem of the long neck: the adapter cable on the breadboard end would only be 25 pins long.

As the previous poster mentioned, not having a simple way to temporarily push in a few jumper cables is frustrating at the moment.

I agree that some sort of adapter would be nice, however since I’m too lazy to solder headers on my Br right now, I’ve found that 18 AWG wire makes good enough contact to use without solder.