 Every single week the great search is brought to you by digikey. Thank you and eight fruit We use all of Lediators power of engineering and searching for components millions of parts on digikey.com this week We saw a question on Twitter and this is from gigmon projects who has a living a different museum of like neopixel stuff It does really good videos and content and tutorials and more Start do some research for PCB connectors last night, and I'm not sure I'll ever climb out of this rabbit hole So we said hey, we're doing our weekly great search digikey on Sunday night put up any search requests Before that and we'll do up a vid and she's like I'm interesting. I'm a little hesitant because you know It's not a really well-defined thing right now and bunch of people said no That's actually a good place to consider Starix Lediator. What are you showing in the great search this week? Okay? so Listen to me first, and then we'll go to digikey. So I You know I was thinking about what am I gonna cover on the great search and this in this tweet popped up And she said well, I don't really know what I want, but I want a board-to-board connector They can you know it can be used for LEDs and it can pass out of current and I was thinking you know I Really like just plain headers, you know like sometimes I know that you know we have special connector sometimes and we've done various connector searches here on the great search And and few people have customer connectors that they want to specify, you know waterproof wands or or ones Are they very high up current capability? But you know headers they kind of work they work really well We use them a lot and then I realized we hadn't done a great search on headers or I couldn't find any proof that we had So if an alternate universe I did congratulations This is the second one, but it's also used in this camera, right? This is a two. This is a camera with a two by nine Header connector, so I thought I would show a couple Headers off and then when we go through digikey when I refer to them, you'll know what I talk about So let's go to the overhead real fast Okay, so this is the camera. I was referring to so this has header connectors for it This is actually a very standard camera connector So the the camera has an FPC and then there's a little bit of supporting circuitry on the back Voltage regulators and whatnot and then you've got your two By nine headers. So when you're looking for headers, you know There's various names for these, you know like Berg sticks or like Milmax's or whatever I just called them socket header and pin header Pin header sometimes called male header socket header sometimes called female header If you're looking on some sites that use either terminology, they're equivalent So usually they're they're soldered in like this. You can even see I've got some I use a header often in feathers You know, they have the male header pin header female header socket header and then they plug in and they make a nice Connection it's mechanically solid, which I really like and it's practically solid as well And of course you can sneeze headers and breadboard. So, you know great for prototyping goodies like that So this is kind of your standard pin header and There's a couple things to note about it. I'll get my calipers. I have to do a great search on how to get Calipers So first thing to note is all of these are Just right up here, these are all I mean, I can't it's very hard for me to get this perfect, but they're basically 0.1 inch spacing otherwise known as 2.54 millimeter each box is about, you know, 25 mill and There are different platings for these So this one you can actually really see the day like normally, you know people get this. They're like, ah, that's silver plate That's not gold plate. It's not that golden You're like this one's this one's way more golden or something But when you see what tin plate there versus or hassle plate versus And a gold plate looks like you really can tell so this is silver plate and this is gold The reason why this side is is not so silver. Sorry. It's tin. I say silver because it's colored silver It's it's obviously not real silver. It's tin plate The reason they do this is because this is like the contact size This is what's actually going to have a connection with the socket header They want this to be good for multiple insertion removal cycles And so it's gonna get more risk of oxidation, you know, if you if you recall your Nintendo Cartridge and how it would it would oxidize and become flaky and then you wouldn't recognize cartridges They weren't gold plated. They were they were tin plated. That was the problem. They would eventually oxidize However, this side is soldered in it doesn't matter if the oxidize is because the solder is underneath the oxidation So doesn't it doesn't make a difference on is the soldering is good. So that's why you'll you'll have split Tin gold but usually you have only one or the other this is Swiss pin so you'll notice these are rounded pins compared to these which are our square pins. It's hard to tell really But believe me these are these are square and they're again 25 mil each these are Much smaller. They're they're you know Less than 20 mil. These are not compatible really. I mean you can plug these into Breadboards, but it's really not a good idea to mix and match the different kinds Swiss pin goes into Swiss pin sockets Square pin goes into square pin sockets. Otherwise, you're gonna have loose pins You get your shrouded IDC these is the same thing, but they just have a shroud around them Well, we'll see that and then finally you get the shorty style So you you know when you see them side by side you can tell so this one You know you saw it at the short side always and then the longer side is the contacts This one is it's about you know eight. Sorry. It's about 20 you know almost a quarter inch This one is six millimeter actually this is a little bit short No, so this is about six millimeter contact length and Then this one is About four point five and here's a question Yeah, there's a frame around them like the ones on the back of LCD matrices still called headers And doesn't make a difference if they're keyed Yes, we did cover IDC headers in Cables for the keyed for for the cable connector. They're a slightly higher quality, but of course the bulkier You know it depends if you If you want keep it these were our most useful only with When you have a cable these are usually cable to board because the cable it can go either way And so this is keyed for the cable. These are still headers. I consider these IDC header or Shrouded headers. That's what they're usually called. Okay, so now that we know the terminology we're talking about let's go to Digi key. It's gonna great search Okay, so, uh, you know searching for headers Luckily, there's actually many options for headers, but there are a couple things to watch out for when you're searching So first off, I like to put in 2.54 millimeter Header not point zero point one inch just because I don't like putting quote marks in search boxes But go for it if you want. I put 2.54 millimeters header and Thankfully, you know, there are like hundreds of thousands of them, but they you know, they are in a couple different spots so you've got the Mailpins and the receptacles you mail sockets. So, you know, you want them that matching connectors These are the socket version. However, what we want are the the mail pin ones and So we want to match for our camera connector So let's look at our camera again Our camera has one two by one two three four five six seven eight nine So you want two by nine header So the first thing you want to do is a number of rows Dual row, I mean they had make up the quadro Which is amazing. You can really pack a ton in we might as well only look for active while we're here and You want number of positions and remember because you just picked dual row you'll want You don't want the nine you want the 18 because two by nine 18 total positions There are some times where you have ones that don't have some pins inserted, but I you'll know when you need those Then we talked about shrouding just a little bit ago, right? You can have different Shrouds around it So this one for example sure and you can see it's not shrouded all the way around It's it's skinnier because it only has shrouding on two edges Or like, you know this Whatever this is going on what's going on. Yeah, I don't know something going on there. We don't want shrouded We want a plain header because we wanted just to plug right in and not have anything around it So let's find the sorry I got lost here so many options Shrouding untrouted Cool next up positions loaded all bases loaded. We want them all loaded next up through hole or surface mount If you're picking placing surface mount if you're not picking placing always use through hole Surface mount and just is less mechanically strong. It always has a bigger risk of tearing off and these are Mechanically very strong. I mean they can really rip off a PCB if you're not careful So I always go through hole now there's two hole and there's two hole right angle Let's see if I can see a right angle one will cover right angle on this one But maybe there's some some future one. I'll we will so this is the right angle once I'll note that the images are often not exact object. They're rendering so you don't have the exact number pins Here's an example again of that split gold on the contact tin on the Sotter point so a little bit less expensive than full gold. It's kind of like the the mullet of headers all right, so Next up. We actually didn't want right angle. So I'm gonna go back and I'm just going to do I'm going to do Only through hole Okay So next up there's six tons of options, but pitch Even though we typed in 2.4 millimeter sometimes other ones 2 millimeter comes in because the 2.5 for some other contact length or whatever So let's let's pick this one Breakaway and cuttable if you look at headers, you'll see they often have little notches It means you can break them apart very easily once you get dual row. It doesn't really matter Row spacing is how much space between the rows. I also want 2.5 forks. I want it to be a square grid termination King to pin Those a little bit, you know, you put them in they they stay put a little bit more press fit solder solder wire wrap I think I want everything but wire up wire up are usually a thicker square pins They're gonna be much more expensive. So I don't think it'll show up and then then the question is that the contact finish Which we chatted about do we want gold or nickel or tin tin lead? We do want this to be Rojas, so let's pick Rojas compliant just to get rid of the the leaded ones And what's nice as you can see here, you know, these are rated for an amp or two. They're very good Okay, so let's start looking at that the options. So again, these are renderings, right there I picked two by nine, but this is a two by two the image doesn't it's a rendering It's it's evocative of what you're getting not the physical size. So just don't be weirded out But you can see there's lots of different lengths. It's like you can get these super long ones That's what I love about header It's just like you can mix and match and you want to like super long mating posts and like ones that are like stacked It never ends these super mega long Swiss pin long Swiss been gold super short. Okay, but we want let's get the standard right standard So for the standard the contact length. Oh my goodness. There's so many actually let's go for Square contacts we don't want the Swiss pin There's so many options And then I think let's just go for gold gold. I know there's like the tin gold Let's just go for gold gold so contact finish gold for the post and then The other one must be gold too. Okay, so now we're only the gold ones So then I think you know, there's there's the contact materials and and thickness of of the Enig, let's do the length of the The headers because again, we want the standard length. So the mating contact length is six millimeters So let's scroll down. Oh my goodness. There's so many here So let's select maybe six to eight Okay, and now I Think we should just Sort by price because we have about 500 options But they none the remaining options are that important to me like whether they're cuttable or whether they're in a bag or not or whether You know what the exact the con that the post length the contact length is it if you're not sure you of course pick that But let's just let's view prices at what you know 1,000 pieces and Then Sort by price. Okay. So the first thing that comes up is We pin so this is like very inexpensive. This is only a couple cents This is a marketplace product. So if you purchase this first off, you can't back order it in second It doesn't ship from Digi key They're often a lot less expensive because they're handled by a third party Not always but oftentimes and they will take longer. They take five days to ship Now this case is not more than 18 and stop which is sad I definitely want it the more than that many for my project. So let's look again and These are oh, you know what I think I selected the contact length, okay So now we actually saw we have more options. So the the next Set that's available are the Sullins Contact connector solutions. So for these This one, you know, there's got the this is eight eight millimeter length. So for this one You'll notice it doesn't say that they're in stock But if you go here it does say it's in stock and then it says can ship immediately But it's a value-added item. So value-add item means they actually did you will cut these to size for you They have like some probably hydraulic or pneumatic thing that they will automatically cut all them to be the exact right size you want So instead of stocking like every size of every header They'll just stock like the really long pieces and then they'll just sort of like when you go to like the Home Depot and you're like I want like a sheet, you know, I want a couple two by fourth, but I want them cut down, you know, three feet I don't want the full six foot length or whatever and they'll cut them for you right there You're you know, you're just gonna pay for what you end up needing and they'll do the cutting for you It's just a lot easier than if you bought the 36 pin long ones and you slice them yourself. So they have some in stock and the good news is that You can always order more and they'll be able to make them for you in a day or two It may not ship immediately. But as a value-added item, they always have like the raw materials I'll just do that the extra labor for you. So This one's pretty good, you know, it's 30 cents a piece when I buy 32 Which is pretty good for gold plate headers to get them immediately and again, I can get them in any length and size This one I think is a little bit longer this is 8 millimeters which is In a total length of 13 So it's you know, one millimeter longer than the headers I have here on my desk However That's fine by me. It doesn't for me the actual length doesn't matter so much as long as it it matches with the socket headers I've got so And this is what I'm gonna get. This is so ends PRP see zero zero nine D fan RC So my great search, that's how you find headers