Raspberry PI - another "free" option for connecting to GPIO Pins

I just received a Pi Cobbler Breakout Kit for Raspberry Pi from Adafruit.

It looks great for connecting the GPIO Pins to a proto board while minimizing the likelyhood of shorts.

By the way, check out their site as they not only have a lot of Raspberry PI stuff, they have TONS of other interesting products.

After I had order the "Cobbler" I thought of something else that might be useful for connecting to the rPI GPIO header and require no soldering / heat shrinking like what I suggested here.

If you see an old computer being "recycled" (more joy of junk), open the case and look for the wires that go from the front panel switches and leds and plug into the motherboard. You can see them hanging there in this picture. You can just cut them away from the front panel with side cutters, leaving the wires as long as you can. On the end that plugs into the motherboard, just pull them off, you will find these connectors will fit the rPI GPIO header pins exaclty.

Although most of the connectors are double, and would cover 2 pins at once, that is not a problem (even if you only need access to one GPIO pin). Just strip the insulation off of the end without a connector, twist tightly and insert into the propo board. Tinning the end with your soldering iron will keep it from fraying, just make sure that you use the solder sparingly and knock off any excess while still melted so as not to make the wire to fat to push into the proto board.


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