I am working on a project that has a whole bunch of components such as toggles switches, buttons, encoders etc.
The issue I have is that I have a jungle of wires going into my breadboard.
Each component has a wire that needs to go to GND.
Is there a technique where I am supposed to wire each Negative lead to some type of junction and therefore only requiring a single negative wire to the breadboard ?
(This would eliminate about 40 wires into my breadboard)
Basically, keep all the negative power wires connected together and one wire going to the power negative. Keep all the negative signal wires together and one wire go to the Arduino ground. Use one wire to connect the Arduino ground to the power source negative .
Things change if the power wires are carrying a lot of current.
Paul
essjaye:
Is there a technique where I am supposed to wire each Negative lead to some type of junction and therefore only requiring a single negative wire to the breadboard ?
Does your breadboard have power rails?
If it does, a single ground wire from the arduino to the "-" rail makes the rest of that rail available to all of the components on the board.
But how do I merge all the signal wires into one ?
essjaye:
But how do I merge all the signal wires into one ?
Are you thinking signal ground or the actual wire with the signal? If the latter, then obviously they have to go from sensor to the chosen arduino pin.
Paul
For example if I had 20 buttons and 20 switches and that would result in 40 wires that would need to be connected to Negative rail on the breadboard and then that would be taken to the Arduino GND.
How do I merge the 40 Negative wires, so that only 1 wire needs to go the negative rail on the breadboard?
Perhaps it would help if you drew a wiring diagram (at least a partial, perhaps not all switches etc)
Draw it such that different areas of the diagram represent different of your project (i.e. panel, breadboard, indicator LEDs etc)
For you 20 switch example, as long as they don't carry power you can jump all the switches (one to the next etc) for ground. Leaving you with 21 wires to deal with.
I can’t draw it up as I am remote and writing this from my phone.
However I think what you are saying is that I can chain all the negative terminals together ?
Just connect the ground pins of all the switches to the nearest one, chaining them all together. Or make it a star. Or whatever suits your layout, as long as they're all connected. Then from one point you connect that web to the outgoing wire.
As you have 40 switches and buttons, you can reduce your total wire count to 13 by wiring them as button matrix (you will see all diagrams of buttons in a nice square, 5x8 or 6x7 would work for you, but of course that's just a diagram, they don't have to be arranged like that - just wired like that). To be able to detect every individual one you will have to add a diode to each switch. Sparkfun has a good tutorial explaining the basics of matrixes.
Still too many? You can reduce the wire count to just 7 by charlieplexing your buttons, but now the reading (and wiring) of the buttons becomes a lot more complex than if you were simply using a matrix.
Appreciate the response.. thank you
You could try this idea using an IDC connector, 2X5 here.
A 2X22 pin connector gives you 44, also many other connectors to chose from.
However I think what you are saying is that I can chain all the negative terminals together ?
For simple wiring, yes.
The matrix method will also work, however no matter how you do this you will have to make 40 connections (at the switch) somehow.
