How much wire for my cab?

[Brad DeShong]

Can anyone give me a good estimate of how much wire I'll need to buy to wire up 5 controllers and 30 buttons?  Also, anyone know what size female spade connectors I'll need for the cherry microswitches Happs uses?Gonna make a run to Radio Shack/Home Depot to pick up some things.  

Thanks!

Brad

P.S. Probably using 18AWG for the grounds and 22AWG for everything else.

[BASSOFeeSH]

.187 female quick disconnects.  I got a box of 100 from radioshack.com.

And for my joystick I got 75' of wire.  I have 3 joysticks & about 26 buttons & while I'm only 1/2 way done it looks like I'll have enough wire.

Then again you can never have too much wire lying around.

[Mike]

Yea you can't get the .187 connects from Radio shack in the store you have to order them. You can get them from the store but you will get an equal number of male connectors with them. As for wire it depends on what your wiring them to. If your using an ipac you will need about half as much wire compared to using a keyboard hack or some other device that uses a matrix. The reason for that is on the ipac you can daisy chain the grounds on the matrix you can't. unless they are going to the same point on the matrix. 75 feet is probably plenty if you put the device near the controls. If you stick it at the bottom of your cabinet you'll need a lot more wire.

[SirPoonga]

Also go look at your local surplus store for wire.  There is one here that has tons of cheap wire.  Can never have too much.

[Brad DeShong]

Great...I'm using an IPAC, so I'm hoping the wiring goes off without a hitch.  Thanks for your help.

Brad

Yea you can't get the .187 connects from Radio shack in the store you have to order them. You can get them from the store but you will get an equal number of male connectors with them. As for wire it depends on what your wiring them to. If your using an ipac you will need about half as much wire compared to using a keyboard hack or some other device that uses a matrix. The reason for that is on the ipac you can daisy chain the grounds on the matrix you can't. unless they are going to the same point on the matrix. 75 feet is probably plenty if you put the device near the controls. If you stick it at the bottom of your cabinet you'll need a lot more wire.

[joe]

what size wire should one use?

[JQ]

22 gauge is the size wire that I've seen most people state they use.  I bought 2 spools of 100' 22 gauge wire to wire my cabinet with.  It sells pretty cheap at the local Radio Shack, so buying the extra is not that big of a concern.

If you goto the radio shack website, search for part number 910-1775.  The insulated .187 female disconnects are on sale right now.  The local stores had them in packs of 10, and would have cost me twice as much to buy them that way for the quantity that I needed.

Daniel

[BASSOFeeSH]

While your at, or ordering from, Radio Shack pick up a multimeter if you don't already have one.  It'll be a lifesaver if you're trying to hunt down a bad link in your ground wire.