Converting between 2mm and 100mil pin spacing

For the post about RFID readers with Netduino, I had to use the ID-20 reader from ID Innovations that has very short pins with 2mm spacing and not the breadboard friendly 100mil spacing.

To fix that, I decided to make a little adapter using some slightly modified header pins. I used a single row of the 90 degree angled type, since the lead that sticks out on the PCB side is a bit longer than the regular straight ones.

After straightening the legs out, and then bending them to fit the ID-20 2mm pin spacing, I used a 10×2 pin connector for a ribbon cable to hold the two parts aligned when soldering the headers to the ID-20.

Now I can either plug the reader into a breadboard, or simply connect my jumper wires to the new header pins, that is a lot longer than the original ones.

With the ID-20 reader raised from the breadboard, it’s also possible to have wires below the reader. For the ID-12 it might not be necessary, but the ID-20 is so large, that it covers up all the other connections on the bread board.

Related posts:

  1. Alternative programming cable for LCD I/O Backpack Following up with yet another alternative to the FTDI cable...
  2. RFID Readers with Netduino Up until now, all I had done with the Netduino...

About Thomas Flummer

I'm an electronics engineer, primarily working with web related software development in my professional life, but in my free time, likes to tinker with various electronics projects, mostly focusing on the bridge between computer and the physical world.