Connectors — the catalog vocabulary
The connector entries the rest of the catalog is specified in: every package, adapter and headstage names its probe side and DAQ side in these tokens, which is what makes compatibility computable rather than a matter of reading drawings.
Why connectors are catalog entries at all
A connector is not a product you use on its own. It is in the catalog because it is the unit the whole signal chain is specified in. A package terminates in one; a headstage accepts one; an adapter exists to turn one into another. Once every record names its connectors in the same tokens, "will this chain connect" becomes a question the catalog can answer, instead of one answered by comparing two drawings.
Pitch is the fact that decides handling
| family | pitch | typical pin counts |
|---|---|---|
| Omnetics | 0.635 mm | 12, 16, 32, 64 |
| Omnetics MRI | 0.635 mm | 16, 32, 42 |
| MilMax / DIP | 2.54 mm | 16 |
Omnetics against MilMax is a four-fold difference in pitch. That is why a DIP header can be hand-soldered on a bench and an Omnetics nano-strip cannot, why one tolerates a rough mate and the other does not, and why the packages built around them behave differently in surgery.
Families in the catalog
Omnetics and Omnetics MRI · Samtec (40-pin, Edge 8-pin) · Panasonic 96-pin · Hirose (16/32, 64) · MilMax/DIP · niPOD 50-pin · NeuroNexus M1P (16, 32) · NeuroNexus X3 / X3SR / X6 · Neuropixels J2 · HDMI and Micro HDMI, including the XDAQ NP port.
Reading an entry
An entry carries connector_id, family, pin count, pitch and gender where each is known. Not every
entry is complete — pin count and pitch are recorded for the families where they are the deciding
facts, and some entries exist only to give a chain endpoint a name. An absent field means unrecorded,
not zero.