Help with diy apex BOB and switches

cww81 · Apr 23, 2022

So I’ve been working on this little project all day and can’t seem to get the switches to actually communicate to my apex’s sw 1-6 switches. I wired everything matching up colors and followed a guide that used the same 8 pin cable as I have and it had purple as unused and blue as ground. I bought a multimeter to test continuity as advised on the same guide. (don’t know what I’m doing) When I touch the black terminal to my ground wire (blue) and red terminal to any other color it beeps and shows a negative number which I assume means current is flowing. Honestly just need help as I thought this would be a simple project but I’m obviously missing something. In the pictures of the speaker termial block the right set of wires goes to the apex and the left goes to the switches I made. Thanks!

MikeTheNewbie · Apr 23, 2022

I would separate the troubleshooting in 4 steps.
1. Set the multimeter to continuity test and touch the red and black leads, it should beep when you touch them and stop beeping when you separate them.
2. Test that your buttons work. touch one leg of the button with the red lead and the other leg of the same button with the black leg. When the button is not pressed the multimeter shouldn't beep. When you press the button, the multimeter should beep.
3. Check that the Apex correctly reads when the cables make contact. The way it works is that apex senses when any of the cables 1,2,3,4,5,6 touch cable 8 (ground).
3.1 Add all the digital switches to the Apex screen and make cable 8 touch cable 1 and Apex should show swithc 1 is active, do the same for 2 - 6.
4 now that you have tested everything individually, you can attach (solder) the wires to your switches/buttons.
Note that pin/cable 8/Ground needs to be connected to one leg of every button, the other leg of your button needs to have any of the cables from 1 to 6.

Good luck!

MikeTheNewbie · Apr 23, 2022

BTW, ground is typically the black cable. Doublecheck that against the diagram but if that is the case in the break out box, then that is the one that should be connected to all your switches.
It should look like this: