Wiring Control Deck - How to Connect Ground Wires to a Central Location

[mkuehn]

I'm in the process of wiring all my microswitches to my KeyWiz Max, and I'm to the point of needing to connect all of the ground wires back to the KeyWiz. I want to run just one wire from the ground position on the KeyWiz to a central location that I can then run ALL of the ground wires from the switches to, since I'm not really interested in trying to make one continuous chain from all of the ground points on all of the microswitches. Problem is, I don't think the part I've got is the one I want to use to do this.

I've got some Euro-style terminal strips (shown here, but longer) that I could use, but those don't seem to be exactly what I'm looking for.

I want a part that has one point that I connect to the KeyWiz ground, and that simply "extends" that ground to multiple mounting points on the part -- a "ground distribution point" if you will. Kind of like on a breadboard, how you can connect one wire to the top of a column, and then all of the holes in that column "connect" to the wire at the top of the column. (Is it apparent yet that I don't work with electronics that much?  )

What part do I need to accomplish what I'm trying to do, and what is the proper name of the part to ask for? I'd like to stop at Radio Shack on the way home and pick up what I need so I can continue working on the controls tonight, if possible.

If I CAN use the terminal strips I have, can someone explain how? Unless I try to jam a bunch of wires in each hole on one side, and then split the ground wire to the opposite side of each jammed hole, I can't see how I would do it, and that also gets away from my plan to just run one wire from the KeyWiz to my ground distribution point part.

Or, perhaps my idea won't even work, and I'll HAVE to daisy-chain the grounds together, but I feel like I know enough about circuits to say that my idea is solid.

I searched the forums and the net for this information, but came up with nothing. Any links or pictures would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Matthew

[WunderCade]

I'm willing to bet you'll have to fabricate the (grounding hub??) you're looking for.

The reason being is that most people have a tendency to want solutions that reduce the amount of wiring and work - a harness setup does just that. Your scheme, as you describe it, sounds like it requires much more wire while not really having an advantage. The pointlessness of it leads me to believe you will probably have a hard time finding something like that.

But, if you'd like a tut w/ pics on the normal method for grounding a circuit of switches try here:(Once there, scroll down to grounding wire section)

http://spystyle.arcadecontrols.com/01/index8.htm

[mkuehn]

The article you linked to is helpful. Thanks for that. I hope I didn't just overlook it on this site.

Those Euro-style terminal strips came with the female quick disconnects, and so I assumed they were to be used. Plus, I have 16ga stranded wire I'm using to wire the control deck, and I thought things would get a bit sloppy trying to jam two 16ga wires into each female quick disconnect going the daisy-chain route, so I thought, well, how about just running each ground back to a central grounding hub?

Apparently no one does it that way, and I could only think of hack ways to modify that terminal strip to work the way I was thinking I wanted it to. Thought perhaps someone here would have already come up with an ingenious way of solving the problem (using the wire and quick disconnects and terminal strips I already have, that is).

So I looks like I just need to get some smaller gauge wire, and use the wiring method you linked to.

Thanks for your help,
Matthew

[boykster]

What you need to find is commonly referred to as a common bus, or a bus bar



I get mine at marine stores (for my boat) but I'd bet radioshack or other electronics store would have something similar.

[Kremmit]

There's no reason you can't do it your way; it's usually not done that way only because it's likely to use more wire, and you'll have to buy an extra part to join them all up.

On the last control panel I built, the P1 side and the P2 side both have their own separate daisy-chained ground bus.  Those are in turn connected to a central point, which is in turn connected the the ground terminal on my encoder.  And on each side, the joystick and buttons are on separate sub-loops, which tie together before going to the central hub.  I figure if I have a wiring problem, I'll have it's location narrowed down right away, just by seeing which control(s) is/are dead.

But you can do whatever you want- as long as there's a path to ground [/i]somewhere[/-i], it'll work.