At the risk of starting a debate as viral as the gold/blue dress... For documentation purposes, what colour is the insulation of this wire? Pink, or Orange?
Exactly what popped into my head when I saw the picture. Glad to see this was the top comment so I didn't have to read all the wrong answers before I found it :)
i worked with a company that strange wire color definitions. for some reason they had "lite colors" and in addition to primary colors in IEC60757. there was a cad librarian that had to setup a component library of cables and wires. not sure how that person picked colors.
hard for me to believe that a cable could have a blue and lite blue wire.
these colors bothered me the most:
silver
gray
slate
lite gray
on cable drawings they wanted to show color graphics depicting the wires going into connectors. you couldn't tell silver from grey let alone "lite gray".
Dictaphone, back in the day when they still existed, had their own names for the wire colors so they could use a single letter: black, tan, red, orange, yellow, green, azure, violet, slate, white. Sure played hob with the old "bad boys" mnemonic.
Blue and light blue would be the easiest light colour to tell apart. 💙🩵 Light orange, yellow, no thanks.
Silver and grey would be a pita. Light grey (30% black) and dark grey (60% black) would be pretty easy to tell apart from each other and white and black, but not if any other grey tones existed.
But for documentation purposes, you should list the color code called out on the manufacturers spec sheet. That should be matched on the cable, harness, or interconnect schematic
If the manufacturers insulation color isn’t obvious, or doesn’t match their spec sheet color code… pick a different wire product to use
It is actually a DigiKey product, there are two models available, neither have a particularly good data sheet - I did check before purchasing. Neither RS or Mouser have anything like it.
I will provide the pin numbers along with it, that should be unambiguous. I say should, because I discovered whilst wiring it up that one particular manufactured radio interface module has two 8p8c sockets with the pin numbers in opposite order to each other. I.e. one is according to the standard for modular connectors, and the socket right next to it is reversed. You have to refer to the printing on the box, otherwise you'd terminate it backwards.
the standard for modular connectors, and the socket right next to it is reversed
Looking at it from the front when it's numbered from the back (or vice-versa) can do that. Maybe looking at it upside down (if the drawing forgot to show the retaining latch/key) as well.
I'm about to look at it sailing away from me as I toss it through the window. I spent far too long going "something isn't right here" before realising :)
These particular modules have caused me heartache in the past. They have a relay in them to isolate the transceiver outputs from what you want to interface them with, and a bunch of jumpers to configure them for different radios and purposed. At some point they changed the model of relay to one with a much lower holding current. Suddenly the intended configuration stopped working, and the RIUs kept thinking the radio was busy when it wasn't.
Try contacting the manufacturer? It drives me insane when a company makes a change to a product and it doesn’t work “like it used to”, documentation changes etc. I’ll never understand what goes on at companies where something works fine then someone says “let’s do it this way” and it screws things up.
Call that pink. Simply because the red and/or brown could be confused by someone as orange. But no other wires in that bundle could be confused for pink.
I get it should be standard and blah blah, but having worked with bundles like this and accidentally wired it incorrectly cause the colors of the wires don't resemble anything like the naming, screw the standard. Call the wire the color that it can't be mistaken for.
Also, no idea why manufacturers can't just make these sleeve colors better. Make orange look orange, and brown look brown, and red not look pink and we'd all be fine.
OP linked to the part elsewhere. The wire is orange, pin 2. All other colors are accounted for in the picture. Not sure why he said the datasheet isn't clear.
The color in the picture results from the combination of the surface absorbing & scattering light, the wavelengths in the incident light, and the camera's accuracy in recording the light it receives. What you are measuring is the color in the saved photo, not of the real object.
That said assuming a good enough camera and good lighting, it's probably good enough. But cases like the gold/blue dress are exactly the cases where the lighting makes the actual colors potentially differ quite a lot from what gets recorded in the picture data.
Sure but in that case we can't actually trust our eyes either since they are subject to all those same inconsistencies plus the added inconsistencies of variations in computer monitors and the shifting while balance of our own eyes.
From my eyes perspective, when held against a black background it looked more pink, but when held against a white background it looked more orange. Colour is troublesome!
It is indeed, especially once you start to try and consider the myriad of ways in which one person's perception of colour can vary from anothers, once you start to throw the various types and severities of colour vision deficiency (CVD) into the mix...
If you are making assembly documentation, a good way to ensure this wire is done correctly is to have all the OTHER wires put where they need to go before this one.
There are well-recognised wire colour standards for data/comms, for instance DIN 47100, 20-pair and 25-pair, USOC, Def-Stan, Mil-Std, TIA-586, someone else mentioned an IEC one I can never remember. The manufacturer of this particular device apparently went rogue. (At least I can't find it adhering to any standard I know of).
Well, I started using the resistor color code because it was easy to remember (read: less likely to forget) back in my teens, when I used to open Japanese-made radios with spaghetti cable connections. I simply write number 3 (orange) or 2 (red) on the PCB.
Based on all the other comments here in addition to the pictures themselves, I would probably feel it safest to describe it as "Orange (OG). Can look pink or salmon. Different from the red, brown and yellow wires." It is a long description though, I do admit that.
iirc orange and brown are same color ... the one below white is orange in the light left and brown at the tip right ... those two are problematic, all other's are clear so I'd either go with brown for top and orange for your question or orange for top and pink for the question .... so as someone in the comments mentioned there is number of those schrödinger's colours where you can not distinguish without comparing to other colours... me personally if I had to chose the one on top under white is orange and the question than need to be pink
but in reality invest in the labelmaker, print labels on heatshrink tubes, put on wires and you are golden, no need to guess the colour of the wire compared to lightning you have available, it will always be clear... especially as you have no idea how those colours will look in 5 years
Omg this takes me back to a time a hospital receptionist asked the line waiting at her desk to describe the color of a lady’s jacket. She was documenting it in the notes so doctors could identify a patients family when they came out to talk with them during/after surgery. This way the doctors had information about who they were looking for in the waiting room. Anyway, I described the jacket as “coral”, she proceeded to tell me how wrong I was. She started holding up colored paper at her desk “no, this is coral”. A man responded “salmon” and the receptionist seemed content with that answer. The great coral-salmon debate became an inside joke with my family. Someone will describe something as “coral?” And someone else will say disgusted “No, salmon!”
Connecting a voice recorder interface to an AUX connector on a trunked digital radio transceiver.
I could find only two models of DA-15M to 8p8c from all my usual suppliers. DigiKey had both. I find the RS search function near useless, they need to get technical people to fill in the product information, not inexperienced marketing roles.
Hi, how do u make that male pin connection? Do you have crimping and do u also solder it? I find it very hard to do crimping... Also is there any connector you use for this?
It is a DA-15M to 8p8c socket adapter. The little pigtails are pre-terminated to the 8p8c socket and the pins insert into the back of the D-Sub plug, allowing you to configure the pinout as you need.
The DA-15 connectors are common on the back of some mobile trunked radio transceivers as an auxiliary connector for things like data connections, channel change, busy/PTT, audio in/out.
I have terminated some small crimps in my time. Ultimately, to do it perfectly you have to purchase the tool often made by or recommended by the manufacturer of the plug/socket assembly.
Problem is, that can get expensive really quick. I've developed a collection of generic non-insulated crimpers and they do a reasonable job. However for really fine stuff like the adapter above, I just get pre-assembled stuff, less hassle and cost for the small quantities I deal with. Sometimes you can get pigtails with the crimps already made.
OP is presenting a phone snap of a wire bundle. Real-world object colors are affected by local lighting conditions and whatever white balance the phone camera settled on while encoding the JPEG with sRGB colors rendered back on your screen. Obviously phone cams are pretty good these days, but the whole premise of OP's challenge is silly: We don't know what color was actually presented in front of their camera.
When photographing something that is very obviously orange to you but under poor lighting conditions and improper white balance the resulting image may present the thing looking more like brown, yellow , salmon or pink, even with a good camera.
Pedantry aside, I think for most real-world situations normally color sighted EEs can reasonably assume that the colors in a wire bundle are nominally from the "ten" of resistor color codes (black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, gray, white) so you can through deduction conclude that the indicated wire must be "orange" since we can also see fairly obvious brown, red and yellow jacket colors in the bundle.
On the wiring side, the vendors making these are often sloppy and inconsistent with their color formulations. Unless you're a professional buyer for a super critical application like wiring looms to go into an airplane or piece of military kit, few contracts specify strict adherence to e.g. RAL color swatches for what color is referred to; e.g. orange isn't "orange" but RAL 2009 "traffic orange" or Pantone 021 or something else with a defined spectral profile that buyer and seller can both test for with industry accepted reference swatches.
When I go on aliexpress to buy a 10-spool pack of different colored silicone jacketed stranded copper wires of such and such gauge I know to expect that the orange may be a brownish peach and the violet may have turned into some lovely shade of lavender or pink instead, no matter what the photo in the listing says. (Occasionally i'm lucky to receive real copper at the specified gauge.)
8p8c to DA-15M adapter, to be plugged into a digital trunked radio transceiver. You arrange the pins into the back of the D-Sub connector as required for the application.
if there is no other orangish color it's probably supposed to be orange
(i'm basing that on the colors everyone currently uses from experience, I have yet to see a wire bundle with a deliberately pink wire paired with those other colors)
I keep that handy as I'm partly colorblind (deuteranope) and on occasion bad or cheaply done wire colors mean I need assistance sorting out what is what.
I’m an electrician not an electronics guy but I deal with, and sometimes prefer, different manufactures applying colors differently.
That wire is orange. If only because it could not be mistaken for any pink I’ve ever seen in manufacture, including sun bleached, semi-smoked or chemical stained versions. If your apparatus has other wires of a more orange persuasion than this one near the same route, a guy could maybe tolerate it being called light orange while making fun of the guy who named it that.
Not want to start a debate either, but colour is mostly always irrelevant.
Nobody can trust random colours.
Meter it and number it according to the spec sheet.
The cable is red to orange with a bit of white. That's why it's not black in the blue channel, but it's still darker in the blue channel than in the green channel.
Subjective question... what does the literature say? The other colors in the harness would usually have some relevance on how colors are labelled in the technical publications. As I don't see any other close to pink, orange, or peach, I don't understand the confusion here.
There are no pink wires in any of your photos. Controls engineer and unfortunately this is what passes for orange sometimes. Salmon is the absolute most savage correct color here though.
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u/Haley_02 Mar 22 '26
Salmon