Make a connection without factory pins

[jackching]

This bell remote did not come with pins below the battery compartment but does have a space there for them. Does anyone know of a simple way to add header pins to a board? I am experienced with soldering but not picturing a simple way of doing this.

Currently I just have a cut telephone cord with 4 small cables in it soldered to the board and ran up through where the pins originally should be. This is just temporary. The way it is now I cannot get the battery cover back on unless I snap open the case and pull the cable back inside of the case. I don't want to have to snap open the case each time I want to modify the remote (which probably won't be often anyway)

[The Robman]

You need to take the PCB out of the remote casing, then you need to get a strip of pins and break off 6-pins, put them in the holes, then solder them on the other side. The pins are the same as those you might find on an old hard drive.

If you already know how to solder, what are you not seeing?

[jackching]

There are no holes. the wires i have soldered on now are scattered on the board, soldered to different connections. Where the headers usually go, there's just an empty area on the board with no holes therefore I am looking at these:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004383072262.html

The 2X4P looks like they should do the job or are there any better ideas? The plan is to run the wires into the female ends then glue it to the board with the pins pointing up.

[The Robman]

When you said there was a "space for them" I assumed you meant there were holes but no pins, which we've seen many times. We have also seen remotes, like yours, where we had to fabricate everything from scratch. It depends how fancy you want to be. For some remotes, I have soldered wires just like you did, and soldered a 6-pin on the other end and just left it like that. If there is a space in the casing for a 6-pin, perhaps you could get a small piece of PCB and attach the new 6-pin to that. Are there any electrical connections under where the 6-pin would go?

[jackching]

There are no circuits or connections where the 6-pin goes. The opposite side of the board does have circuits under that area though. I'm liking my idea better I think.

I think it would be easiest to get the 90 degree header pins and stick that to the board leaving the holes exposed. I could then stick the wires into the holes of the 6-pin followed by soldering the other end of the wires to the connections on the board. This would be my way of doing it if starting from scratch. Since my wires are already on the board, it's just a matter of sticking it on and putting the wires in the holes. I'm probably just going to use 4-pin.

[The Robman]

Yeah, there's no right or wrong way to do this, so go with whatever option you're most comfortable with, I was just telling you how I've done it.

As for only using 4 pins, how would that work? Would you also be making a custom JP1 cable for this? If not, the pins that you leave empty are the #1 and #5 pins, so you'd end up with one row with only the middle pin and a second row with all 3 pins. My advice would be to keep it simple and use a 6-pin setup so you can use a standard JP1 cable, but again, it's your remote, so go with whichever option works best for you.

[jackching]

This is my JP1 cable: https://www.ebay.com/itm/312234679584 If you click the drop down where it says option and choose independent, that is the one I have. I don't need a custom JP1 cable as each cable is on it's own therefore only needing 4 pins. I can label the header pins whatever I want this way in no particular order. It just comes down to which wires I put in the female slots of the header pins coming from the board. Then I can label them.

[The Robman]

Ah ok, I got it. Most people who get a cable with independent connectors end up either replacing them with a single 2*3 connector or they glue them together into a 2*3 shape.

[jackching]

I prefer it independent. To make it easier, I just use a small piece of masking tape on each of the four wires (sticky part to sticky part) and just label them.