The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast #708 – All the Connectors with Davide Andrea
Nov 3, 2025
01:05:09
Welcome Davide Andrea, author or The Electronic Connector Book! And many thanks to Blues for sponsoring this episode of The Amp Hour! Get 10% off your next order in their online store for a development kit by using the code AMPHOUR.
- Davide is an engineer working on Battery Management Systems at Elithion
- He got into writing and editing books via a postcard sent to him after he gave a talk
- For many years he was an editor at Artech house
- He works on Lithium BMS systems for large setups
- How do young engineers learn about connectors, but for tribal knowledge within larger companies?
- Digikey catalog is a good search for connectors overall
- Industrial cinch by Harting
- Should you design a custom connector (“no”)
- Davide also built and maintains an online tool for finding connectors called Identiconn
- Fretting is when vibration causes a connector to fail
- Davide had to go to Bell Labs docs to look up some specs
- Chris remarked that Identiconn is a McMaster (Carr) style browsing experience
- Vendors divide based on how the fields are set up, because that is actually logical for them selling parts. It’s harder for finding/discovering components though.
- On distributor sites, the connectors are grouped by how they were bought
- Chris asked Davide about things that have gone wrong in his career with connectors
- FFC doesn’t connect back into the socket after the tab is ripped away
- ribbon cable vs ffc, CIC vs FPC
- IDC – insulation displacement connector
- Davide has filled in with generated terms where there are no defined language for a family/type of connector, such as with “bump idc” connectors
- “dual beam?
- Chris and Davide did a joint search for the high density CM4 connector that mounts the Raspberry Pi module to another board
- Gender of connectors (note: there is a great discussion about the historical nature of using gender for connectors in the book)
- Pin vs plastic gender
- Shrouded vs enshrouded
- gaziatea (sic) – poem from the 1800
- USB type A connector
- Self mating
- APC7 – self mting connector
- Anderson connectors
- TNC BNC search
- PFFE for the dielectric on a BNC/TNC
- Magnetic connectors with pogo pins
- Example connector from Hyte
- Crimps were designed in the 50s
- The source of having so many power connectors is … imperialism? tahiti / fiji / nz all have different connectors
- Why antennas are male/female is…money? And regulatory silliness via the FCC
- Davide has also written about and is working on lithium ion batteries
- A sodium ion battery book (self published, unlike the LiIon books) should be out next year
- The Connector Book is self published. Your purchase directly supports Davide’s work…and you get the web tools for free!
- “peak lithium”
- What is required when refining sodium for batteries?
- The voltage range and charging needs are different for Sodium Ion. For instance, the range goes from 4V to 2V
- Find Davide on his various websites, on LinkedIn, on StackExchange, and on reddit