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| An appeal to Andy at Ultimarc |
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| Sir Headless VII:
I just spent the last several hours crimping and putting together a 2 connectors for the aimtracks that I am making. This was THE most tedious and frustrating thing I have done in the construction of my entire cabinet. The crimps turn out poorly, or more often the wires just snap after all of the fiddling around you have have to do to get them crimped, into the receptacle, and plugged into the board. To give you an idea of how it went I ordered 50 of the connectors, I figured why not buy an insane amount of them so I can be sure I will get it and have some left over (maybe I can make some for people in need or something). There are 7 left after making the 2 parts. So I ask you, could you please include a wiring harness for the 5-pin connector when someone orders one of your new aimtrack boards. This is not for me, I just finished and if they don't work they don't work, but the parts to create the wiring harness (less the wires) are 13 cents retail. The actual crimping tool for me to do it properly however costs $285.09 and 5 pre-crimped wires would cost $30.50 (almost the cost of the pcb set) plus shipping ($12). The extra 5 buttons on the gun are an advertised feature of the aimtrack but actually getting them to work on this connector without a wiring harness is either extremely expensive to impossibly frustrating. |
| isucamper:
I'm sure you'd be pissed to hear he does supply a harness with the guncon kit he sells. I have two aimtraks, one in a PS1 guncon and one in andy's guncon. It took me about 4 hours to get the aimtrak installed in the ps1 gun, and that was without messing with getting the extra button wired up. It took about 15 minutes to get it installed in Andy's gun, including the third button. For those on the hedge, spring for Andy's kits. Its not worth the headaches otherwise. EDIT: Sorry, thinking about this some more, I can't remember it the kit comes with a harness for all 5 buttons. I know he supplied a way for hooking the 3rd button up to the 5 pin connector, as that is how my second gun is set up, but I don't remember what it was now. |
| Paul Olson:
I have one of the older boards, so I just have the solder pads. You can crimp those pins easily with these $10 D-Sub crimpers: http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103683 Also, if anyone wants to buy pre-wired connectors, look at sites that sell robotics and R/C hobby parts. I have seen the 5 wire connectors for 3-4 dollars. |
| Donkbaca:
I agree. It would be easier to solder to a board without the pins than to mess with them |
| MonMotha:
The connector appears to be compatible with the very common Molex "Picoblade" series. You may be able to find pre-crimped assemblies under this name more easily. Check robotics sites and hobbyist electronic sites. I doubt you could crimp those pins with the $10 "D-Sub Crimper" that everybody has without tearing your hair out. While those crimpers are pretty darned amazing for their price (they'll crimp almost anything of the right size with reasonable reliability), the Picoblade contacts are just too small. I have an Engineer, Inc. PA-09 and it crimps stuff down in that size pretty readily as well as anything the "D-Sub Crimper" can do, and it does a better job, too. They're about $55-65 and very versatile. There's a PA-20, too, for larger stuff. Sparkfun has the PA-09 as their part number TOL-10219. iheartengineering has the PA-09 and PA-21 mid-size here. I wouldn't advocate buying one of these just for this, but if you crimp connectors semi-regularly, I've found these to be amongst the best options in this price range. |
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