as you know microcontroller boards have
many pins and wiring them to other
components or keeping track of the
different wires sometimes it's not easy
today I show you how I do it most of the
tricks work for all microprocessor
boards like the Arduino the esp8266 or
the ESP 32 and with a unique feature of
the ESP 32 we can even optimize a little
more glitzy youtubers here is the guy
where the Swiss accent with a new
episode and fresh ideas around sensors
and microcontrollers in this video we
will cover the following tips and tricks
use colors connect ground first
prefabricated wires use empty dupont
shells use the right pin order not
enough ground or VCC pins on our
development boards super glue can help
sometimes crimping your own wires so
let's start trick number one use colors
colors are essential for identifying our
wires and I have wires of all colors in
my lab but I try to avoid using the same
color at several positions in the same
project unless I have a lot of wiring
there are two exceptions however first I
always use black blue or brown for
ground in this sequence if I have a
black wire ground is black if I have no
black blue is ground and only if I have
none of those I use brown for grunt why
is this important if ground is connected
right the chance of a destroyed part is
reduced considerably because the fastest
way to kill a device is to connect
ground to a wrong pin if you do that all
voltages are automatically negative
compared to ground and for many parts a
negative voltage is the fastest way to
kill them this is hardly possible if
ground is connected correctly so this is
a real pain and money
savor I use red orange or white wires
for DCC also here in this sequence if I
have five and 3.3 volts red is always 5
volts and orange 3.3 volt all other
colors can be used as you wish
tip number 2 follows somehow I try to
wire ground first
because without any other wires it is
less confusing by the way why not always
use black for ground this is because of
trick number three use prefabricated
wires wherever possible you can cut and
crimp your two point wires yourself we
will have a look at that in tip number
eight but you can buy them also
prefabricated and dirt cheap which is
much faster this is why I have a whole
box of such cables and when I need wires
I tear as many as required from one of
these cables these 40 wire cables always
have the same ten colors
unfortunately this creates what we know
as public toilet problem if you have the
same amount of toilets for females and
males usually the line in front of the
female toilets is much longer at least
here in Switzerland everybody knows that
they should be built in a different
ratio but apparently the architects do
not act the same is with two pond wires
everybody knows we need much more ground
or VCC connections but nobody creates
cables with more black and red wires or
at least manufactured DuPont cables with
40 black or 40 red wires if I'm wrong
please tell me the source of such cables
this is why I also use other colors even
if I would love to only use black for
ground
it is a waste cutting measure I own
several cable lengths and choose the
appropriate one for the purpose if I
need a few parallel wires I try to keep
them together as a cable unfortunately
this is not easy because
of my collar rules trick number four is
not to use single DuPont connectors
because separate connectors are hard to
mount and easily disconnect themselves
if this happens and you do not recognize
it you can lose a lot of time for
troubleshooting and if you have to
unplug one part from your project
because for example you want to replace
it with another then you lose a lot of
time because you have to reconnect wire
after wire and sometimes you get it
wrong with the same effect on time loss
this is why I use empty shells as much
as possible even if I do not plan to use
all pins of the device for illustration
let's wire our monster motor controller
and an ESP 30 to both the motor
controller and the ESP 30 to have many
pins we need three pins for each motor
plus ground and five volts the rest of
the pins are unused for our project most
people would connect each pin of the ESP
32 to the respective pin on the monster
port one after the other the monster
port is designed as an Arduino shield
and the pins are defined by the
manufacturer this is why our example
sketch which was written for an Arduino
Uno uses these pin definitions if we try
to map them to our ESP 32 we see that
GPIO 6 2 GPIO 9 are read they are used
to connect the flash memory and must not
be used by us otherwise the ESP would
crash most modern boards do not offer
these pins at the pin headers so we
could use GPIO 14 to 19 instead this is
the result of the conventional wiring
single wires which look a little bit
like a spider web only if we keep track
in our documents we know the order I
propose to use empty shells and populate
them with our prefabricated wires how
many such empty shells do we need for
our monster port we need three of them
why that as said
or the monster board is not we know
shield and therefore you cannot use one
connector for a whole row the distance
here is not 2.5 4 millimeters and the
power pins are on the other side of the
board for the ESP 32 we need to empty
shells one for each side but let's go to
trick number 5 first use the right pin
order we change the pin assignments in
our code let's look at the pins of the
do 8 port the pins are pretty mixed up I
first concentrate on ground and 5 volts
which is labeled V in here these pins
cannot be changed both are on the left
side and I have a bunch of other GPIO
pins on the same side enough for our
purpose so I try to concentrate all
connections to the left side like that
we can omit a connector for the right
side the pin assignment looks now like
that
and the changed
definitions in the example sketch like
that in Arduino environments pin
definitions are usually done using
define statements then the sketch would
look like that with this trick all
connections are on one side of the ESP
32 ports and in a neat order and we can
use only one connector cool
unfortunately this pin swapping is not
always possible with other micro
processors because they bind particular
functionality to particular pins for
example Arduino scan only use a few pins
for PWM or the esp8266 has its serial
connections at distinct pins with the
ESP 32 we can attach functionality to
pins as we wish in limits of course all
output pins of the ESP 32 for example
can be used for PWM the commands are
like that and here you can choose the
pin we even can change the pins for
serial connections with this command and
the two pins are here so the chance we
can create a neat connector is much
higher with an e SP 32 than with an
Arduino or an esp8266 the next step is
to decide on the size of our connectors
for the monster shield we need three
connectors connect the one with three
pins connect the two with two pins and
connector three with four pins that is
the minimum I often use empty shells
which cover all pins especially if the
pins are not connected flush with one
end of the pin row for example I could
use a 5 pin shell for connector 1 and
populate only 2 pins like that it is
much harder to connect it wrong and I
always place the flat side of the DuPont
connector inverts like that I can
connect my devices without looking at
the schematics and the connector for the
ESP 32 it needs 11 pins but I only have
empty shells with 1 to 10 pins
so I use
five and a 6-pin shell and stick them
together with adhesive tape you also can
use p-touch labels on one side then your
connector is even labeled nearly a
professional look this is the resulting
cable harness created for the connection
between the two eight port and the
monster shield neat and quite safe in
its application
this was a long trick with a few phases
trick number six is shorter as with
black or red colors we often do not have
enough pins for ground or VCC here I use
pin headers a two point wire cut into
two and hot glue to create these
connectors also here I use black and red
colors as much as possible I even
created combined power connectors like
that this one for example is used to
connect my power supply and that one to
connect to my power bank and here you
can use trick number seven I only bought
single row empty shells and use
superglue to stick them together for two
row connectors like that you can also
create for example a connector for your
Raspberry Pi if you need a particular
cable length you can use trick number
eight you can crimp your wires I use
this engineer pae o nine tool if you are
interested in finding out why I bought
this expensive tool watch my video
number 39 and also read some of the
comments these are my tricks to cable my
projects successfully maybe it helps you
to save time in the future or at least
create nice-looking projects and maybe
you want to add your own one you can do
so in the comment I hope this video was
useful or at least interesting for you
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thank you bye