Zision Interactive

I populated the switch matrix components on the MPU board, and they seemed to test okay with any single switch. Still a bit worried about if the way I'm driving the switch matrix will work once I've got lots of switches down, but so far so good. Luckily, the actual wiring of a switch matrix doesn't really change regardless of how you connect to it, so even if my board ends up being bad, that won't mean rewiring the playfield. With that in mind, I started trying to plan out the matrix, which was surprisingly involved. Technically any switch could go in any position, so all that really mattered was what made wiring easier. I'd already wired up all the target banks as individual rows, so that constrained me somewhat, but beyond that I just tried to lay out all the other rows based on what groups of switches were closest together:

Doesn't look too bad so far!
Then I tried to connect up the columns...
That looks a bit worse. Then I realized I was going about this a bit wrong. No matter what, I was basically going to end up with two big bundles of wire going up each side of the playfield, and then joining at the back. So I need to re-order the rows in a way that will minimize how many rows/columns need to be run to the back, since that's where the most wire will be used. I also don't need the rows/columns to all connect together, since they'll join at the connector anyway, so I can simplify that a bit.
That left me with a new, more concrete wiring plan for the rows:
The columns, again, look a lot messier...

I feel like there must be a way to simplify this more, but I can't see any obvious major changes, and it doesn't look too bad overall. I'd love to see inside the mind of someone who designs the wiring harnesses for these games professionally.

I have nine colors of 22awg wire to work with, and the playfield itself uses 62 switches, which requires an 8x8 matrix. To keep things clean, I'd like to stripe the wires, so I can tell the rows and columns apart when working. Sadly I couldn't find any cheap sources of stranded wire online, so I came up with this:

Tried it first with a regular sharpie, but the ink would rub off quickly, so I got some oil based ones, which seem to stay on the wire well once they dry. Stick a marker in the top, pull your wire through the side, and you'll get a messy but usable stripe.

With that figured out, I started trying to assemble a minimal corner of the switch matrix for more testing, which ended up being the first three columns on one side of thee playfield, and two rows:

Switch matrix still checked out fine, so I'm going to go ahead and wire the rest of the switch matrix