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Using Speaker Wire with breadboard

vandia

Hi, I got some 20ga stranded speaker wire at Wal-Mart. I can strip it to 18 guage but it doesn't seem to want to hold. Trying to solder it, maybe I'm just shabby at it, but I can't get it to hold into the breadboard.

 

I was wondering if there's some form of pin-crimps that allow you to put breadboard pin headers to wire?

 

Also, I wanted to find out if anyone objected to the idea of using this wire for what i'm using it for: To connect 5v ultrasonic distance sensors to my breadboard. I'm using one speaker wire for 5v/gnd, and another for trig/echo. Is there any reason why I should not use this (eg: stranded maybe causing resistance issues with some sensors if I switch to analog?)

  • Hi vandia,

     

    I take it you plan to use the speaker wire to connect sensors quite far away?

    There are pin crimps but then you need to buy a crimp tool as well, and you'll end up with a heavy gauge wire on the breadboard and it could slip out of the holes due to its weight.

    Another approach (neater I think) is to buy male-to-male jumper cablesmale-to-male jumper cables and chop them in half, and solder them to the ends of your speaker wire, and put some heat-shrink insulation around the join. It would look tidy and would be a lightweight cable to your breadboard.

     

    Or, an even cheaper solution is to just solder sacrificial resistors to the ends of the cable, and chop off the resistor, leaving a tinned copper wire attached to your speaker cable. Use heat-shrink sleeving on it as before. But I think the jumper cable method is better.

  • Hi Vandia,

     

    I like to use the same technique as  . I also like to solder small pieces of leads from components to the ends of wires and put heat shrink over the solder joint to provide some strain relief. If you want the best size wire for the bread board get some 22 ga tinned hook up wire. I buy rolls of this size and pull the insulation off to use for wire ends. I also like to make my own bread board jumpers from the 22 ga wire by pulling insulation off the ends and bending to fit the distance between points on the bread board.

     

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    20 GA wire might be a little too thick and it may prematurely deform the sockets of the breadboard.

     

    John