Make sure the “key” (notch) is on the correct side; it’s marked on the silkscreen. It should face all the pin labels.
Do not install any other pin headers on the Cobbler! We’ll be soldering wires directly later.
Install a 5-pin header from below.
This isn’t rocket surgery, don’t worry if wires aren’t exactly the right length. Six-ish inches is fine!
24 gauge stranded wire is ideal. A little thicker or thinner is okay, as is solid-core wire…stranded is simply more flexible.
If you have some different colors of wire, you can color-code these. Here we’ve cut two each red and black (for power), and four green (for signals). If you don’t have different colors, that’s okay, we’ll also be labeling them in a bit.
The wire colors are random; don’t worry if yours don’t match the photo.
Something about the composition of these wires is strange and slightly brittle, and you may have trouble with your first couple of tries stripping them. No problem…clip these a little long to start, and if the stripping goes badly, you can trim it off and try again.
Strip about 1" of the outer jacket only to reveal the three wires inside: two are insulated (red and either white or black) and the third is bare copper.
Some headphone cables have red and black wires rather than the red and white shown here. This is OK, it all works the same. Red is the right channel, black or white is the left channel, copper is ground.
Arts & Crafts Time!
Labeling the wires will make later steps much, much easier!How you create these labels is up to you, depending on the materials and tools you have on hand. Ours are low-tech…masking tape and a Sharpie pen…but if you have a spiffy label maker, go to town.
U (up)
D (down)
L (left)
R (right)
A (primary button)
B (secondary button)
X (joystick horizontal)
Y (joystick vertical)
+ (5V)
– (Ground)
¢ (Coin insert)
1P (1 Player Start)
Each label has two symbols written on it, so it’s readable from either side.
X and + look similar enough that you may want to underline them for directional clarity: X and +.
The four conjoined jumper wires should be labeled with: X, Y, + and –.
Four of the plain wires should be labeled: U, D, L and R. If following our color scheme, these would be the green wires. The other four plain wires do not receive labels (unless you're using a single color of wire, in which case we’d suggest adding extra + and – labels to two wires each.)