Connection Techniques

Introduction

When building robots you need to connect multiple devices together. There are lots of ways to accomplish this. Some are better than others!

I have built lots off things that turn into a real rats nest. I would need one thing connected to my power source so I just solder a wire to the positive side and another wire to the ground side. As Chef Tell would say "Very simple, very easy". Then I needed a second device so I soldered those wires on. It's still not bad, yet... Or you can just tiwst the wires together, solder them and cover it with tape...

As you add more devices it becomes a real problem!

Two examples of the wrong way to do it.

The picture on the left shows multiple wires soldered to a common point. It's not obvious from this picture but one of the red wires is soldered to another common point on the back of the board. And it has another 2 or 3 wires soldered to it.

Both photos show examples of multiple wires soldered together and covered with tape.

Connections will generally fall into one of two catagories:

Individual signals
Bussed or grouped signals

I will present different methods to make these connections.

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