Locking Power Connecter

Buying Locking Power Plugs for Digi Products

Most Digi products which come with a barrel-jack power now support a twist locking connector. Nice! No more power plugs falling out under abuse ... but where do you buy such connectors? Your local big-box or spare-parts store won't have them.

Digi supplied

Digi sells a four (4) foot pigtail with the correct connector attached, it is Part Number 76000732 and can be found on this web page: http://www.digi.com/products/model?mid=2441

Digi also sells a power "Y-cable" with one socket split into two plugs. It is 63000287-01 (it is shown on the Digi DialServ data sheet here: https://www.digi.com/products/models/760007www.digi.com/products/models/76000732.

Self-installable

If you desire the loose connector which you can attach to a battery pack or other wire, one online source is http://www.mouser.com, which sells both the plug and sockets.

• Plug (male part) is 171-0725-EX and in July 2008 cost about $1.35 each. (The PDF spec is KC-300897)
• Jack (female part) is 163-1100-EX, but is for plate or PCB mount. (The PDF spec is KC-300840)

Making your life easier

As you develop for Digi Zigbee/Mesh products, you may find plugging in a dozen small power supplies (aka: wall-warts) a painful use of power strips. One simple solution is to buy some Digi supplied pigtails or the loose plugs, then retrofit the Digi supplied power packs to support multiple devices. For example you may have a 1A 12vdc or 3A 5vdc supply, yet none of the XBee adapters require that much power. You can splice in 2 or 3 extra plugs and use a single power supply to power multiple devices.

Another option is to buy a larger 5A or 25A off-the-shelf power supply and connect a dozen Digi supplied pigtails to it. The image above shows an industrial AC to 24vdc supply which enables a single power cord to powers a test setup consisting of eight 9-30vdc XBee adapters and one Digi ConnectPort X4 gateway.

Of course use your engineering common-sense; estimate the required current draw of your multiple products and make sure you are not overloading the power supply! These multi-headed wall-warts probably are a BAD IDEA for actual site installations, but wonderful for your own development.