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- DC Barrel Jack Plug - Male
This barrel jack plug is great for adding a common connector to the end of our wires. This jack is compatible with 5.5mm barrel jacks that have a 2.1mm center pole diameter. The outer shell unscrews to reveal solder terminals and a crimp strain relief. The outer shell has strain relief as well.
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Customer Reviews
2.7 out of 5
Based on 3 ratings:
So many better options
Bought a few of these, and started soldering for an outdoor project. First thing I noticed is that the outside plastic protector thing broke as soon as I tried to screw it on. Well, guess I don't need that? After a solid soldering job, and plugging in, nothing turned on. I found out that the center pin (+/-?) that you solder to has a very very very weak connection to the actual center plug. Every time I wiggled it, the connection was made again, so I ended up having to just glob a ton of solder in the center to make the connection work. If it were just two pieces of metal attached somehow, this would be nice, but...I don't know.
Useful when used with photon battery shield
These barrel jacks work well for connecting a solar panel to a particle photon battery shield. I have never had one break.
Outer plastic does not age well
I've noticed that over the course of a few years the plastic used for both the strain relief and the barrel weakens and becomes very brittle.
First you'll find the strain relief to just crumble but maybe that's not such a big deal; you can put some tape or glue...
Next, you'll find yourself plugging it in or out and then the whole outer jacket just crumbles.
I'm not buying more of these from SparkFun as long as they carry this particular model.
Sorry to hear you had trouble with this part. In the past we had some quality issues with these, but that has been resolved for a while now. I double checked our stock and the parts we have at the moment have much higher quality plastic than the old ones. Feel free to reach out to our tech support department if you have any questions.
The plastic outer shell is made of hopelessly inferior materials that break with perfect regularity in my extended experience. Very annoying even if they are cheap in every sense of the word. There must be a better product than this somewhere on the market and Sparkfun absolutely should find it and just throw these away rather than continue to sell them.
These are horrible quality. You can literally crumple this into plastic shards with minimal pressure (a flick of the finger will actually crack the casing, or break off the end). I don't know what kind of plastic this is, but its thin, brittle, and doesn't last.
I had the same problem. The quality is really bad. Granted, they were a year and a half old when I finally got around to using them, but they crumbled instantly.
How many amps can this handle? I would like one that has some headroom on the specs, and my current projects call for 3A at 14V and 1.5A at 22V. I'm blinking LEDs bright enough to embroider by.
(And why is the only documentation link a video? This fine morning there's no datasheet link, and I'm at a computer without flash so I can't watch the video. )
When will you be coming out with a female version of this?
5mm? Do mean 5.5mm?
Will this work with 18 AWG wire?
How do we know which wire (positive or negative) we're supposed to hook up to each lead on this?
For the Arduino Uno it is center-positive (barrel/sleeve-negative). I suspect it depends on what your application is. Use a multimeter to be sure.
is center-positive the most common? Also, which lead on the jack corresponds to center or barrel?
Center positive and barrel negative is for electrical shielding of the signal also any fraying in the wiring would be automatically grounded instead of open able to shock unlucky people.
Yes, center-positive is most common.
How does the outer shell strain relief work? Does the mesh strain relief heat shrink or something?
It does not shrink, you just slide your cable through it. It's there to increase the radius of the bend at the tail end of the plug, and thus reduce failure by repeated kinking in the same spot.
What is the inside diameter of that strain relief? Or to put it another way what is the largest cable insulation that will fit through there?
My calipers say it's 5 mm.
What's up with the quarter in the fourth picture?
thats one smoking hot quarter, isnt it?
Shiny, isn't it?
It's basically a rough indication of size to those familiar with the size of a quarter (which would be practically all of the U.S. customers).
There's usually also an image with actual rulers along the sides, but that one seems missing from this set :)
Yeah, I know, but it looks like the quarter's contrast is waaaaaaay off. That's what I was saying.
Nah, just very shiny and new - reflecting a black backdrop :) It's new-ish.