After speaking with Interlink support, they sent me to Trossen Robotics who has the 0.5″ FSRs for a coupl ebucks cheaper than SparkFun. I put in an order for 10 today after destroying the solder tabs on the one we currently have.
Interlink also gave insight into the termination on the FSRs — they come in three flavors: unterminated, solder tabs, and female (some connector). Anything other than solder tabs is a special order with 8 week lead time, so that’s out. By default, interlink crimps the FSRs with these Tyco terminals. More information on this type of connector can be found here. I’ve also ordered this female SMT ZIF connector.
EDIT: Just got that connector in from Digikey and it should work fine. I found this 2-circuit directly from Tyco (P/N 5-520314-2) — digikey doesn’t stock the 2-circuit flavor (unless we want 10,000 of them). We may want to look into buying prefab FFC that will connect the 5 leads on the mote to the FSR board header. Tyco does not sell this cable. It might not be worth it, though — might be easier just to user regular wire and std header crimps — but it would look cool I suppose. The flatness and uniformity of the FFC isn’t really required for this application, but it’s nice and tidy. Same logic applies with the 4 USB leads. We could use solder tabs to connect to the mote and a similar 4 circuit female receptacle on the FSR board. IMO, it’s probably more efficient to use wire and std header connections.
[...] ground. I also replaced the 2 FSR pins with a 4-circuit ZIF connector (more information in ‘FSR distributor‘ post; 2-circuit connectors have a minimum order of 10,000 everywhere). These changes [...]
Pingback by FSR circuit board « Hand Hygiene — June 7, 2010 @ 4:43 pm