How to ground

[PedroSilva]

Hi,

How do you ground all the buttons, since in IPAC as only (I believe) two places to attach the wires for grounding?

[Lilwolf]

Connect one to the next...  All commons are the same.

The time to break them up is for conviences (one going in one direction... and the other in the other).

Or to break the connections for some controls.  Like if you have a 4way controller set to the same keys as an 8way controller... Well, when you are playing a good 2 player SFighter game... you are about to do a super upper cut and your final super combo... when your opponent grabs the 4way controller and messes you up......  Times like this its nice to have  a cutoff switch to the 4way controller.

[JamesS]

Here is a pic of what lil-wolf is talking about.

Then what I did was connect the Ground from my 25 pin connector to the last item the ground runs too.

And it all worked the first time, according to my Multimeter.  What I did was connect one side of the MM to the last Quick Disconnect, I then connected the other end that I have there and got the beep.

Meaning I had not broken the connection somewhere along the path.

[JamesS]

Oh, and my brother and I ended up shortening the wire between the QD's.  It was my first time and my bro said it looked like it.

Although I wired the whole thing, ground and Positives in about 3-4 hours.  My bro said a guy he works with would have taken all day on it.  So I felt pretty good, and it all worked first time.

[Witchboard]

Here's an image from Ultimarc's website that may be easier to see what's going on.

[PedroSilva]

I see and understand what you all have done, but, if one of them breaks, none will work after the break point, right ?

Shouldn't it be safer tu use some kind of "connection" where all the grounds connect and then a single cable to the IPAC ?

Something like this:

                                   IPAC
 __________________|__
|oooooooooooooooooooo|
|____________________|
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Buttons

[JamesS]

I think other people have used Fingerboards here.  So they can talk about it.

But from my understanding that would work and keep everything working.  However, if something breaks, you may not realize it at first.

[JustMichael]

What I did was daisychain the grounds like the picture shows and then I connected a wire from the last button back to ground.  This will allow a single break in the wire to occur without making any buttons stop working.

[Sasquatch!]

What I did was daisychain the grounds like the picture shows and then I connected a wire from the last button back to ground.  This will allow a single break in the wire to occur without making any buttons stop working.

Yep.  Have a ground wire going to your first button, daisy chain to all of the other buttons, and then have the ground from the last one going back to the encoder.  This will allow you to have one break and be okay.  (If you have two breaks, the buttons between the breaks will be dead.)

[Oldskool]

I used a terminal block.

[PedroSilva]

I used a terminal block.

That's exacly what I was thinking of doing. Are there any "known" problems ?