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If were to make my own microcontroller board, something similar to the Texas Instrument MSP430 Launchpads, what types of pins can I use for the GPIO male header pins to solder to the board?

Do they need to be made of special material or have special specifications?

Note that I am not including the emulator area, only the microcontroller area of the board.

I was looking through the Mouser website and I do not see anything under the label GPIO pins. I do see however "terminal pins" sold individually and "male headers" sold in as two rows of ten attached together, but nothing specifically indicating a row of ten "GPIO pins." And they do not specify as to whether these are even supposed to be used with solder or just for solderless applications. Is there some type of substitute I can use?

TonyM
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keikaku
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4 Answers4

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The term "GPIO pins" stands for "General Purpose Input-Output pins". This is an internal name for microprocessor pins. As being "general purpose", these pins can be connected to ANY GENERAL PURPOSE devices, header, pins or whatever.

Ale..chenski
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You can use any conncectors or pin headers you want.

The connectors are not really called GPIO connectors. They are just any connectors or pin headers.

They are only called GPIO connectors in the MCU board manuals because they are connectors or pin headers with the MCU GPIOs connected to them.

Justme
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"GPIO header" is in this case a functional description only, it doesn't imply a form. It is a header (any header really) that happens to be used for connecting to the GPIO pins of the microcontroller.

Sometimes, as in the case of a "mains socket", the description is both functional and form-dictating. Say, a mains socket must adhere to national standards, even though many different socket types could safely do the same job. If something provides mains voltage but is not a standard socket, it'd then be called a "mains connector" or "mains terminal block", etc.

Such distinctions are indeed confusing for people new to the field, and I'm glad you asked the question. Hopefully it will help other people.

TonyM
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Kuba hasn't forgotten Monica
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    There are often requirements for certain pins based on the expected current load. For microcontroller GPIO, the current load is required to be minimal (otherwise you need to add protection circuitry) so the form factor is primarily dictated by convenience instead. – Miral Feb 18 '24 at 23:24
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While technically not standardized, if you want something to connect to the wildly popular Arduino/Beaglebone/Raspberry/Dragonboard 410c/MX8M boards using their idea of GPIO, you're looking for 0.1" / 2.54mm pitch headers.

This has been a popular size since before IDE / Parallel ATA. If you do not have a good reason to pick anything else, I'd stick with those.

Mast
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