How much wire is needed?

[dithrin]

I know each layout is different but as a general rule how much wire is needed to wire up a basic CP. 

2 player with 8 buttons each(includes coin and player start),  3 admin buttons and 4 pinball buttons(2 a side).

I dont want to buy to much wire but i have no idea how much I may need.  Doesnt seem like it should be much but i know it can add up quickly.

will be using an ipac that will be installed in the center of the cp so that distance is close.  is 50' enough wire or do i need more?

 

[Drnick]

50Ft should cover you.  It all depends on layout and size of control panel. but unless your building a monster sized cabinet then most cable runs except ground should be no more then 18 Inches to 2Ft. (Even allowing for keeping them tidy and bunched). 

[dextercf]

I dont want to buy to much wire but i have no idea how much I may need.  Doesnt seem like it should be much but i know it can add up quickly.

There is nothing wrong with having a little stock of wire. It's not like its that expencive either.
I recommend you buy larger bulks, therefor should save on the totals.

[Nephasth]

I bought 1000' for my project. I have a few hundred feet left. I will need to buy another spool when it comes time to do my marquee and cabinet lighting.

[codefenix]

Assuming the IPac is about a foot away from the controls, allow yourself two feet.  Slack is good.  Multiply that by the number of buttons you have and add four for each joystick.  This puts you at 24' per player, not counting the ground.  You'll probably use about 1/3 to 1/2 as much for that if you daisy-chain it like you're supposed to.   

No one's mentioned it yet, but get wire of multiple colors.  RadioShack (love 'em or hate 'em) sells multi-color assortment packs.  Buy two of these.  In my panel I used green for positive on player 1, red for positive on player 2, and black for all the ground.  Use whatever color convention suits you best.  It could save you headaches later on when it comes to maintenance.

[Nephasth]

There are also controller interfaces that come with premade harnesses, if that's something you'd be interested in.

[mgb]

Another option to consider is the economy jamma harness from jammaboards.com. Its $10. Snip off the jamma connector end and you've got all the wire you will need complete with the correct size female disconnects already crimped and they're insulated. It also comes with premade jumpers for the commons. This will give a quick, neat and inexpensive wiring job with multiple color conductors.

[bkenobi]

But the JAMMA standard only supports 3 buttons per player, right?

http://www.jammaboards.com/jcenter_jammaFAQ.html

The standard JAMMA harness will give you connections for P1 and P2 joysticks, 3 buttons each, coin switches, and start buttons (total of 18 inputs).  If dithrin wants 2 player with 8 buttons each, he will need 28 inputs.  You can save a couple buttons by not including a start button and a couple more by not including coin buttons (you'd need to have these as shifted/combined inputs), but that still leaves 24 required inputs.

[BobA]

If you look at the wiring harness for the specific product you will see that the economy harness includes wiring for buttons 4 5 and 6 plus other wires that could be used such as test and counter etc.  Look at the pinout list not the wiring diagram.  I would still go for the 2 player gamepad interface with wiring included if you do not already have an interface.

Harness

[bkenobi]

Sure, there are lots of extra wires that won't be needed (monitor and power related for instance).  I was just saying that, with a standard JAMMA harness, there wouldn't be enough connectors for the actual controls.  I did forget that some of the other things on the harness will probably have the same size female QDC and I wasn't aware that the JAMMA+ or JAMMA economy harness would include those other connectors.  I figured that if he were going to buy any QDC's and a crimping tool, he might as well wire it up from scratch.

Anyway, if it's only $10 and reasonable shipping for that harness, that's a really good way to go IMO!  Wiring up the CP is not hard, but it does take some time to get the wires the right length, routed correctly, crimped, etc.  If you can eliminate a lot of that and pay about what the supplies would cost...DEFINITELY a nice option!

[mgb]

that harness has more than the standard jamma 3 buttons each.
worst case scenerio, you get 2, they're cheap.

[ragnar]

I probably used 50 feet of speaker wire.  Remember that half of the wires are a common so there is not much wire there thanks to daisy chaining.  And if your iPac is in your CP, the runs to most buttons will be short

I have an iPac 2 in my CP.  So he runs from the buttons are fairly short.  Maybe 2 feet per button.  The exceptions being the 2 buttons I have on top of my cab for shift and shut down (highly recommend shutdown up top and a shift hidden somewhere)

I have
2 - u360s ... these are USB joysticks so no wire needed
11 buttons per player (N64 full support).  So 9 play buttons, start and coin per player
I also have 3 admin keys.  start and pause and quit.  I highly recommend this setup and I don't think I could live without it.  How many times I have paused a fighting game to look at a moves list is beyond me at this point.

I keep hte shift key out of the way so my kids can't get to things like Mortal Kombat.  Those are on a "mature" game list.