Pin Headers
Pololu.com among other places provides crimped cable housings so that you can build custom sized cables. Unfortunately, they do not provide crimp headers for 14 pins or 24 pins, but it is useful for a prototype board if you bring out connects in say 3 pins (data, ground, power) or 4 pins (scl/sda or rx/tx plus ground/power), and then use a custom cable to connect to your device:
- General link
- 3 pin crimp header
- 4 pin crimp header
- male/male pre-crimped jumper wires
- female/male pre-crimped jumper wires
- female/female pre-crimped jumper wires
- male crimping pins
- female crimping pins
- Crimping Tool: 0.1-1.0 mm² Capacity, 16-28 AWG
- Crimping Tool: 0.08-0.5 mm² Capacity, 20-28 AWG
If you are going to be plugging the cable in and taking it out a lot, put a bit of glue when inserting the crimped cable into the plastic housing. You won't be able to remove it, but if you need to apply force (such as you need with male pins on some breadboards), the cable won't be pushed out of the housing.
For crimping your own wires, stranded wires work better than solid wires. Usually you want 22AWG or 24AWG wires.