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for a certain project, I need very long male to male wires (~3 meters). I went on amazon, and think that these might do the trick.

However, because I am very new to the electronics in general, I got confused with the what exactly the AWG or Gauge, and also what the difference between is between solid wire and stranded wire.

If anyone could tell me what kind of wire I need, I would be very grateful. In a nutshell, I simply want to connect a Keypad (this one to my raspberry pi (more specifically the breadboard).

Cheers!

nickhir
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  • Nothing to do with the Pi. Stranded wires are flexible and preferred for jumper wires as they are expected to be moved frequently. For your task I'd got for whichever is less expensive. Larger diameter wires will have less resistance. It probably doesn't matter too much for 3 metres, it would for 100 metres. – joan Apr 12 '21 at 15:53
  • Keep in mind, that with longer wires you introduce more capacitance into the circuit(breadboard is terrible about this too) so be aware that the frequency at which you can check these buttons may have to be reduced. – Chad G Apr 12 '21 at 23:42

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AWG = "American Wire Gauge" is a standard for the thickness of wire (check Wikipedia). AWG 22 is equivalent to a wire surface of about 0.3 mm^2. That's fine to be used in breadboards. If you don't need to transmit a lot of power, that should be fine. If you use it also for the power lines, you might need thicker wire or take several wires for ground and/or VDD.

Stranded wire is wire consisting of a lot of wires ("Litze" in German). This is more flexible but cannot be inserted into a breadboard easily. Since solid wire ("Draht") is very unflexible, and many solid wires are even more so, you should probably look for a cable with enough wires (i.e. 8 x 0.25mm^2 - the type used for ethernet cables) and attach a plug/socket pair to them. Then you would only use the solid wire from the breadboard or pi to the plug.

PMF
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