cantgetnosleep

Thanks for the quick reply. I was hoping I could tie the grounds together--it definitely makes things simpler. Moving the shift registers onto the boards is a great idea, but I'll have to see if I can squeeze the parts onto the boards, or maybe I'll finally spring for the non-profit version of Eagle so I can make larger boards. Hmnmm. Cheers - Andrew

Hello all, I'm designing a PCB to hold approx. 16 tactile buttons and LEDs. My question concerns grounding. I'm wondering if I can simply create a ground plane on the PCB and tie all of the LED and switch grounds to the same plane, and return this to a common ground with the DIN and DOUT grounds. By this I mean: combine the LED and switch grounds on the PCB and run a heavy-gauge ground wire to a common ground on another board, likely the PSU board somewhere (near where the DIN and DOUT board grounds connect). Or, do I need to group the grounds for each bank of 8 switches and LEDs and return this ground back to the DIN and DOUT modules, keeping the LED grounds and switch grounds separate, and keeping each set separate as well. Obviously if I can combine the grounds this makes routing the PCB MUCH easier. However, I'm wondering if there's a reason not to do this. Thanks - Andrew

Thanks for the link to the thread. Yeah, I meant the small, PCB-mount tact switches. But that's not to say that I'm not open to suggestions r/ other switches, if they're reasonably cheap. Do people just source the caps from Mouser or Digikey? I didn't find a ton on their website, but I didn't do an exhaustive search. Can you mix and match the caps, or do you have to buy caps from the same manufacturer for the specific switch? Cheers - Andrew

Hello all, So I'm looking at building a MIDIBox64 and between the mu-caps website and this forum everything seems pretty clear--except one thing (so far, at least). What are most people doing for caps for the tactile switches? And how are the caps attached to the switches? Glued? Snap on? Is caps even what they are called? I tried searching the forum but didn't find much on this topic. I'll probably be using ALPS SKHHDTA010 tactile switches, but I'm open to suggestions. Many thanks for the help. Andrew