Again there's been some work done exclusively on the wiring part. The original connecting board now has both its D-Sub connectors soldered to the corresponding wires (photo 1 showing work in progress). These wires consist mainly of individual signal LEDs and track / power / optical detector current. For the second connecting board, built a month back, the connector with the optical detector wires had about half of these soldered (photo 2 from when this was done). The short-term goal has become setting up 3 signals and the already connected optical detector in such a way that each signal "thinks" and reacts according to the various detectors located in front and after it.
This will most likely be a stepping stone towards the final computer-controlled code, yet should be simple enough to get some visible results fairly quick.
Since the connector with the wires for optical detectors has been fixed to the connecting board, the control panel board had a corresponding connector installed, and wires placed for linking it to the Phidget 1018 interface. A second cable was assembled in order to link these 2 (photos 3 and 4).
Finally the wiring plan for the layout itself has been entered in a Visio document (preview in photo 5). Holes cut in the foam underlying board are also present. The whole idea is to be able to successfully track a wire, since now there's information about its endpoints, its color and the tooltip entered (ShapeSheet->Comment). As for the control panel (preview in photo 6) - the wires that will be done in the future still have a black color, to differentiate from the ones already installed, that have been colored according to their real counter-parts.
Tonight I've also connected the various power supplies and checked that everything works well. Last photo shows the temporary setup employed, complete with an USB hub, which was connected through 2 USB extender cables - just to be sure that the hub can be physically placed behind the layout - actually the spot where the control panel will be sitting, in a vertical position.
What was unexpected was the sheer amount of time needed to complete this wiring part. Just tracking each and every cable on the layout itself and drawing the corresponding diagram took easily 30 work hours. Each 32-pin connector cable took more than 5 hours to build. What started as a very simple job ended taking much more that I would have ever expected - which makes me seriously think about DCC decoders for each signal, switch and other accessory in the future, given the wiring should mainly consist of 2 wires carrying the signals across. But for now - and this layout - things will stay the same. There are still a couple of items to be purchased - namely some Phidget boards that will take care of additional optical detectors, switch feedback and switch operation; some D-Sub connectors; a small power supply for the optical detectors in order to stop using the current bulky one; and a few others.
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