Cover for jumper / prototyping / breadboard wires

I often find myself wanting to connect device programmers to boards with a different in-circuit programming connector layout , or connect a breakout board with 0.1" headers to a microcontroller on a development board. The male / female jumper wires that places like Sparkfun and Adafruit are great but are prone to fall out and it's  a pain to put them all back in the right orientation when you need to remove them for some reason. I made these holders to solve that problem.

You can use them as-is just to keep things in place better, but if you plan on plugging / unplugging them I recommend a small bead of superglue around the top. I've made them a fraction shorter than the connectors so you can keep the bottom flush and have a small ledge at the top so the glue makes contact with both the connector and the shell.

Included are sizes of 1x2 - 1x10 and 2x2 - 2x10 on the plate along with a “dummy” female connector that can be used if you have some unused pins. The second plate contains half height versions that can be used if you're plugging into a shrouded connector and need the connectors to protrude out.

I've put some polarization notches / marks on the top. Note that depending on the connector gender and numbering standard that the short edge mark for pin 1 and the long edge mark for a notch, if present, may not be the same. For that reason if you're inserting into a connector with a polarizing notch I recommend just using the long edge mark as the reference and ignoring the one on the short edge.