Step 1: Gathering Tools and Materials

The tools don’t need to be fancy or expensive, but they do need to be somewhat small. You want something that fits easily into your hand and that you can use to hold small bits of wire. There are a lot of tools out there that combine pliers, strippers, and wire cutters into one, but I would recommend having three separate tools. When it comes to wire strippers, especially if you’re a beginner, I suggest getting a dedicated wire stripper. The one shown on the right works very simply. By knowing the gauge of your wire, you can clamp down on the correctly marked hole and then pull. This will cleanly remove the casing without damaging the wire underneath.

As for the soldering iron, don’t get the cheapest one you can find. Get a decent one that has marked numbers to indicate strength, and make sure it can go as high as 50. For the solder, look for 60/40 Rosin-Core Solder. This is not a brand, but a type of solder. It won’t be hard to find as it is the most common.  If you don’t know how to solder, check out some beginner tutorials on YouTube.  You’ll really only need to solder one joint, so it doesn’t have to be perfect.  Just get a basic idea of how the iron and solder interact.

Each “prong” is a connector pin.

Anyone reading this should be familiar with a 3 color RCA composite cable and electrical tape. Heat shrink tubes can be found at any Radio Shack, as well as the pin connectors and wire.  We’ll need an assorted pack of heat shrinks with both 1/4″ and 1/8″ tubes.  For the pin connectors, find the drawer with all the little bits and grab a 25-position female D-sub connector. If you have any trouble finding it, write it down and get some help. It’s a small piece and will give you 25 pin connectors even though we’ll only need 4.  There’s probably going to be another piece in the bag, but we don’t need it.  The small spools of wire should be easy to spot. We won’t be using a huge amount of wire, so feel free to get a very small spool.  We want to check that the wire is around 18 to 20 gauge.  I think 18 is a good choice; much smaller and the wire becomes very fragile, bigger and it becomes difficult to work with because of its thickness.

Once you’ve got everything assembled, you’re ready to move on.

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