Wiring Up Control Surfaces

[m00dawg]

I am now starting to get rather deep in creating the control surface boards for my =sidr8tr]rackmount MB-SID and am trying to figure out how to best approach the wiring of the different modules. I will be using the MB-6582 baseboard and using the button and LED matrices (just like the MB-6582 CS).

I was going to use pin headers to hook everything up and, originally, I had been using the minimum amount of headers to fill the particular module. My plan was to combine the wiring later (maybe on a separate board). The thought occurred to me, however, that I could just run the full headers from the MB-6852 baseboard to every module and only wire up the pins needed for that particular module. That way I end up with a single run off the baseboard up to the CS as sort of a string.

I was thinking of having headers in a sort of in/out type of thing. Doing that would require up to 6 pin headers (JD5 In/Out, JD7 In/Out, JD8 In/Out for all but the LED matrix for example), assuming 1x8 headers are used. That seems like a bit much so another thought I had was to use DIL headers with crimp connectors and just run a long cable and place a crimp connector where I need to in order to hook up a particular module. I could do something similar with SIL headers but that seems a bit less elegant.

Ultimately, I guess my question was are some of the ways others have tackled this when making their own control surface?