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Which wire is which

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Xiren

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Hello everyone.
I am new to the forums... well, I am new FOR my son.

He has shown a interest in playing with electronics. Some of his projects he does he will use the same color wire throughout the project, making it hard to trace a wire. I would like to help him out more, but this is not a field of expertise for me :(

Is there a chart that shows what color of wire should be used and where? To clarify, if you open up an old tape recorder, you will see different colored wires. Are they there just to make tracing easier or what?

Thank you in advance.
 
In short, yes, wires are coloured in order to make them and their purpose easier to identify. The three most popular colours in hobby electronics are red, green, and black.

In any electronics situation, hobby or otherwise, black is always used for ground (although I'm sure someone will post some exceptions). Any wire leading to ground or the negative terminal of a battery in your son's projects should be black.

Red is the most popular colour used for wires leading from the positive terminal of a power supply to a component in a circuit. Green is also used for this purpose, although to help make more sense of things in my circuits I tend to use green for more ambiguous situations, like the signal wire between two integrated circuits.

Other than black always being ground I don't know if there's any accepted, universal convention for the colouring of wires. I know you can buy packs of pre-made jumpers, and those contain wires of all colours of the rainbow - what wires are used for what purpose is largely up to the person designing the circuit, although the person could make a legend to help anyone identify what coloured wire was used for what.

That said, there are conventions that seem universal enough for certain coloured wires in certain situations, such as computer power supplies (although those change every now and then from company to company) or in automotive electronics. Yellow seems to be the accepted colour for +12V both situations, red for +5V, and orange is used for +3.3V. Here's a link that shows the different colours used for most types of computer power supply connectors and wires - put your pointer on each connector to see what the colours represent.
http://web2.murraystate.edu/andy.batts/ps/TheFIX_java_table.htm
 
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Xiren said:
Hello everyone.
I am new to the forums... well, I am new FOR my son.

He has shown a interest in playing with electronics. Some of his projects he does he will use the same color wire throughout the project, making it hard to trace a wire. I would like to help him out more, but this is not a field of expertise for me :(

Is there a chart that shows what color of wire should be used and where? To clarify, if you open up an old tape recorder, you will see different colored wires. Are they there just to make tracing easier or what?

Thank you in advance.
hi,
The colours I try to use are:-

Unreg +V, Orange,,, Regulated +V. Red,,,,, +5V Brown.

Unreg -V, Violet,,,, Regulated -V, Blue

Common 0V, Black,,,, Ground, Green.

Signal wires, Grey,White,Yellow,Pink

These are for electronic wiring, NOT mains wiring, follow your local colour codes for mains wiring...

You will find that its not always possible to follow another persons circuits by relying on the wiring colours, we all have our own preferences.

Eric

EDIT: I try not to use if possible, wire colours with a secondary colour as a tracer, sometimes there is no choice.

I think the rule should be, consistency in your own colour preferences,[ also mark the colour on your drawings]
 
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Hank Fletcher said:
Red is the most popular colour used for wires leading from the positive terminal of a power supply to a component in a circuit. Green is also used for this purpose, although to help make more sense of things in my circuits I tend to use green for more ambiguous situations, like the signal wire between two integrated circuits.

I've always used green as an alternative for ground because quite often Earth terminals are green in colour. I use blue for signal wires but there's no convention that'll tell you to do that, it's just a convention I've adopted for myself.

Brian
 
In the past one of the nicer sources of wire for hobby use was the discarded hunks left behind by telco installers at housing developments. There could be up to 36 wires in the cables, all with different colors. Given the price of wire these days, you might want to cruise by any new housing in hope of finding discards.
 
There are all sorts of different standards around the world but in Europe the up to date IEE standard is as folows:

DC system
Positive/negitive earth or three wire (+V 0V -V)
+V = Brown
0V = Blue
-V = Grey

Unearthed:
+V = Brown
-V = Grey

AC system
Three phase:
Phase 1 = Brown
Phase 2 = Black
Phase 3 = Grey
Neutral = Blue

Single phase:
Phase = Brown
Neutral = Blue

In all cases, the protective earth is green and yellow striped.

The old standard is:

DC System
Positive/negitive earth or three wire (+V 0V -V)
+V = Red
0V = Black
-V = Blue

Unearthed:
+V = Red
-V = Blue

AC System
Three Phase:
Phase 1 = Red
Phase 2 = Yellow
Phase 3 = Blue
Neutral = Black

Single Phase:
Phase = Red
Neutral = Black

The protective earth is green.

The problem is that some installatins might use the old standard buy have a new bit added on, this is dangerous because the black could mean either neutral or phase 2 and blue could mean either neutral or phase 3. I prefer the old standard anyway as it used simpler colours which seemed to make more sense. We only adopted the new standard fully in 2006 because it was EU legislation.
 
And over to North America AC power standards:

AC System
Three Phase:
Phase 1 = Black
Phase 2 = Red, or Black with red tape on the end
Phase 3 = Blue, or Black with blue tape on the end
Neutral = White

Single Phase:
Phase = Black
Neutral = White

The protective earth is bare copper, green, or green with a yellow stripe.
 
Did he say to cut the red wire or the blue wire? BOOM! hehehe
I have never heard of a standard color code for bombs.

Anyway, standard color code for DC boat wiring is:
Red = Battery +
Orange = Alternator output
Black = Battery ground
Yellow = Battery ground on some newer boats
Green = Battery, earth, and water ground for bonding purposes.
Purple = Ignition and key on power for everything
Yellow w/ Red stripe = Start
Grey = Tachometer
Blue = oil pressure sender
Brown = Water temp sender ( I think oil and water colors should have been swapped )
Brown w/ blue stripe = Oil and water alarm switches
Pink = Fuel gauge sender
 
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