If you’ve been following along with this blog for a while, you’ve perhaps noticed my general annoyance with soldering. I have a love for screw terminals like the one’s as seen here for Arduino and involving the ESP8266.
After buying a TS100 iron to replace my extremely cheap model due in part to a review on Hackaday, my view on this is somewhat changed. Regardless, sometimes solder is just not the best connection method.
One interesting alternative are alligator clips, generally used for temporary connections between devices like an oscilloscope or multimeter and a signal source. On the other hand, there’s no reason that this kind of connection can’t be used for experimentation and semi-permanent connections, as shown by the Makey Makey and BBC Micro:Bit connection methods.
What if you want to connect to an Arduino with clips, or perhaps implement four-pin sensors with this type of connection? While you would normally have to do a little bit of hacking to make this work properly, EasyPads, seen in the above video, makes this operation simple. Just plug the pads in, and it provides four connections with alligator clips, allowing for experimentation without the hassle of soldering, or even connecting screw terminals.
