Tindie

If you’ve been following my writing for any time, you may have noted my general disdain for soldering. Perhaps it’s that I never really learned how to do it well, or the fact that when I worked in industry I took a lot of pride in my ability to design and build a very neat electrical cabinet using screw terminals as the connection points. The spring-loaded versions may be even better, but I never really used them much for whatever reason.

I suppose you could buy industrial connectors and use them on robotics projects, they tend to be too large to fit inside of many projects, and can be quite expensive as well. Here’s a link to some of these products from a very good, and relatively inexpensive industrial supplier, however they will likely still look expensive when compared to many hobby electronics components. Alternatively, you could resort to using heavy duty terminal blocks like these from eBay, but they’ll be overkill for most projects.

Screw Terminals by Simon A. Eugster via CC BY-SA 3.0

So what I would propose is something in the middle. Configurable screw terminals smaller and less expensive than those sold for industry, and able to accommodate hobbyist robotics and electronics projects. Tindie has a few screw terminal adapters, like this one for the Raspberry Pi (pictured at the top of the page), and this Arduino-compatible development board, but where are these wires supposed to go? Into a breadboard? Bah!!!

Perhaps this product exists and I just haven’t heard of it yet. Feel free ping me on Twitter @JeremySCook and let me know. Otherwise, I think it’s a great product opportunity!