Ribbon Cables for Digital Input

[Caleb Fulton]

Is it okay to use ribbon cables for transferring digital inputs from a screw-down block to the RC? The wiring diagram says that you should use 24g/2 or 3 conductor wire, but wouldn't ribbon cables do about the same thing?

[Joe Ross]

Rule C8 specifically allows ribbon cable for the digital and analog inputs.

[Caleb Fulton]

Thanks

[Mike Yan]

Would you be able to use a normal printer cable with the female end cut off and have the wire soldered to a breadboard or some other type of PCB?

[Jay Lundy]

Originally posted by Mike Yan
Would you be able to use a normal printer cable with the female end cut off and have the wire soldered to a breadboard or some other type of PCB?

I'm not sure about the breadboard, but unless the rules have changed (which I don't think they have), cutting standard parallel port cables is legal and used quite often.

[Nate Smith]

Originally posted by Mike Yan
Would you be able to use a normal printer cable with the female end cut off and have the wire soldered to a breadboard or some other type of PCB?

One thing to keep in mind is to make sure that you use a straight 25 pin, 25-conductor cable, and not a standard printer cable. I'm helping out a few teams in the area, and we tried using a printer cable last night to wire up a mockup of some digital input switches on the RC, and when we took the plastic shield off of the solder cup, we realized that the last few pins were all bridged together. Of course, with the pin arrangement used on the RC, this would not allow for use of all digital inputs, and may even have the possibility to damage the RC.