Are you using Rugged, Miniaturized Connectors in your Electronic Designs?

Circular connectors are traditionally quite popular for ruggedized uses. I used to encounter a lot of these at one workplace; aluminium construction, and about as rugged as possible. Strong lock. Can be kicked, driven over, thrown off a building attached to equipment and the connection still won't break. But not miniaturized really, although the number of circuits could be quite large.

Also we also used these (and I'm currently messing about with some equipment that has one of these); it's a Lemo connector. Extremely miniature, and still quite rugged. Dead easy to plug/unplug even when wearing gloves, and yet will latch strongly and won't accidentally disconnect). Which kind of hints towards the sort of applications they get put to. But price is extremely steep (a handful of these will cost the same as a top-end iPhone). For applications where the only things that matter are reliability and size.

At a more normal price! M8 and M12 connectors are kind of semi-rugged (but not anywhere near the ruggedness of the connectors above). But good enough for railway use (for example):

Image sources: Google images.

Circular connectors are traditionally quite popular for ruggedized uses. I used to encounter a lot of these at one workplace; aluminium construction, and about as rugged as possible. Strong lock. Can be kicked, driven over, thrown off a building attached to equipment and the connection still won't break. But not miniaturized really, although the number of circuits could be quite large.

Also we also used these (and I'm currently messing about with some equipment that has one of these); it's a Lemo connector. Extremely miniature, and still quite rugged. Dead easy to plug/unplug even when wearing gloves, and yet will latch strongly and won't accidentally disconnect). Which kind of hints towards the sort of applications they get put to. But price is extremely steep (a handful of these will cost the same as a top-end iPhone). For applications where the only things that matter are reliability and size.

At a more normal price! M8 and M12 connectors are kind of semi-rugged (but not anywhere near the ruggedness of the connectors above). But good enough for railway use (for example):

Image sources: Google images.

I've encountered  the Lemo style for both power and microphones in broadcast equipment.

Lots of similar looking expensive stuff out there. I've encountered the Fischer type in automotive

Have you had any experience with M12 for Gbit Ethernet use ? I'm currently looking for an alternative to RJ45 for digital AV type applications. Criteria is for a more rugged connector (to prevent randoms from damaging them with their badly crimped plugs) and also for a different form factor to clearly differentiate them from a corporate LAN data point.

Hi! I have. This is what some railways use for some of their network equipment, although I don't have much more information. I think it would work very well for that purpose. Here are some devices (I've not used these particular ones) which also claim GigEth over M12: https://www.advantech.com/en-eu/products/eki-9516-series/sub_623c6d4c-6b33-431d-8896-fac206db2f44 

Definitely sounds like a good choice if RJ45 isn't robust enough for your application.

beacon_dave M12 is used in many rugged industrial network switches.

shabaz Harting also have nice rectangular shell rugged connectors.