Cable assembly and connector advice

[extide]

Ok,
So, I am working on a project where I need to connect a few PCB's together. Basically I have a current sensor that is on a little PCB that may be 3-6 ft away from my main PCB. Nothing exotic here, power, ground, and then signal back from the current sensor (Ratiometric, voltage), no digital data, high clock rates, etc.

So I have been digging through various options from amphenol, molex, etc, but buying cable ends and pins and assembling them all is frankly a pain, and right now we are using screw terminals and we are looking to save some labor time, so doing all that would really not save us much/any time.

What I want is to utilize some sort of off the shelf cable assembly. I want connectors that click/snap into place, as this will be in an environment with a lot of vibration. I was thinking of using something like cdrom audio cables, as they have nice little 4-pin connectors that lock into place, but I need these to be at least a few feet long, and havent seen any longer than like 30cm or so.

There are also some options with JST style connectors, but I haven't really been able to find exactly what I am looking for with these either.

What kind of solutions do you guys use for these sort of situations? I need a cheap solution, so nothing crazy and it needs to lock into place. Are there some other already existing common cables out there that I could utilize for this? I am looking for the cable itself, and then the sockets on both ends which will go onto my PCB's. I would prefer through hole sockets, but if there are some otherwise great options with SMT sockets for the PCB's I am definitely interested.

TIA!


EDIT: I will be buying these typically in lots of about 100.

[kb0thn]

CAT5 and DB9 would be two common and inexpensive choices. CAT5 is nice because it doesn't have flips in it. And the cables are generally decent quality and known characters.

Lots of time, money, and effort can be invested in cables.

[extide]

Yeah, I briefly thought about doing RJ45, or heck, even just RJ11. Need to make sure I get jacks w/out magnetics though.

Currently I think RJ11 is the winning idea.

[tonyarkles]

If you go for RJ45 and only use the centre pins, the end user could use RJ45 or RJ11 cables. Pretty handy if there's a chance that they'll be in a situation where they don't quite have enough cables and need to make do with whatever is handy.

[kb0thn]

I would stay away from RJ-11 (RJ-25 or 6P6C or 4P4C or whatever you want to call it). Too many configurations possible. Flipped cables and straight through cables. Different wire gauges. Connectors that can be forced in (4P4C). CAT5 cables are cheap and readily available.

RJ-45 connectors with built in magnetics are going to be a lot more expensive and a lot less available than a plain connector. You aren't going to get one accidentally.

Here is the female RJ-45 connector we use by the thousands:
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/RJHSE-5080/RJHSE-5080-ND/1242687
Great availability. High quality. Very solid without needing a chassis surrounding it. Pretty cheap. Buy from TTI if you need higher volumes.

[Christopher]

Molex KK I've grown to like.

Dunno about vibration though. Molex do all sorts of conne tors with locks on

[extide]

I would stay away from RJ-11 (RJ-25 or 6P6C or 4P4C or whatever you want to call it). Too many configurations possible. Flipped cables and straight through cables. Different wire gauges. Connectors that can be forced in (4P4C). CAT5 cables are cheap and readily available.

RJ-45 connectors with built in magnetics are going to be a lot more expensive and a lot less available than a plain connector. You aren't going to get one accidentally.

Here is the female RJ-45 connector we use by the thousands:
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/RJHSE-5080/RJHSE-5080-ND/1242687
Great availability. High quality. Very solid without needing a chassis surrounding it. Pretty cheap. Buy from TTI if you need higher volumes.

Those are some great points. Also, since we buy lots of stuff from digikey anyways, I will probably just use the exact connector you linked, as that will save me the time of digging through the many options.

Now to whip up some footprints and such...


Thanks everyone!