Test Leads for the Bus Pirate.

If you have a lot of patience, some skill with a soldering iron, and are meticulous, this might be a fun project. Otherwise skip this and buy them.

I'm not known to be organized. In fact just the opposite. SOO when I built these leads I simply wanted to make some leads that would connect the bus pirate to something so that I could use it. I'll be building my own leads later, AFTER the custom enclosure. But I wanted something for the in between times.


So I went to the garage where the bulk of my parts box has been banished to, and found an old IDE cable. After (almost) carefully removing the connectors, I cut a nice length of it and set about splitting twelve of the wires off. A note on splitting. This can be difficult I've done this before with an IDE cable for a computer I was having airflow problems with. I split the cable into strands, and bundled them together into a round IDE cable. There is a trick to this. Find the segment you want to split... it's going to be between two 'bumps' Take a moderately sharp knife (I use a lockblade because my leatherman is SUPPOSED to be sharp) and with moderate pressure run it between the bumps you want separated. A sharp knife will just cut, and potentially cut the lead inside one (or both) of the bumps. Separating them like this will weaken the plastic between, then you can carefully pull them apart.



So I stopped by my favorite electronics store and picked up a ten pin connector. It's pretty straight forward. If you can't figure it out, give up now. I hear thousands of people thinking... Why would you use twelve wires on a ten pin connector? Well, Firstly, if I HAD cut one of the wires, then it's no big deal. Since I didn't I'll modify this cable later on and use those pins for something else. It's possible that Dangerous Prototypes may upgrade to a twelve pin header on the board for V4. So I kept my options open. Better to err on the side of Caution. Notice my plug doesn't have the coolbeans no fail notch for the bus pirate. I pined it so the cable would move AWAY from the bus pirate... makes sense. NOW for the pins...

Disassembling is pretty easy
compress the test lead and there is a little copper hook, straighten it. The lead will open up and you will have a spring, a copper pin, the cap, and the nozzle.




THIS IS IMPORTANT

thread the cap onto your lead. Then just a dab of solder on the lead where it is connected to the wire...ya know to connect it. Then replace the spring, the nozzle, and bend the hook back into place.


If you are picky as to what color is associated with what you can use the pin to ohm out which is your wire on the other end. I didn't care though as long as they were all different. If your careful and diligent you now have a very nice ten pin test lead cable. I went ahead and put a dab of superglue in each hole so that they wouldn't accidentally pull out... waiting on it to dry now.