Power buses and first led lighting -

My ship has limited power. So I am creating three bus paths: Ground, 5V, and 3.3V. It will also help with the limited amount of wire I have. It is important to not have ground loops. Ground loop is an unwanted electric current path in a circuit resulting in stray signals or interference, occurring, e.g., when two earthed points in the same circuit have different potentials. The 9V-1A power supplies share the same ground. If you follow each ground path, they end without connecting back. I made sure both sides of each bread board are grounded

Green: Ground
Red: 5V
White: 3.3V

I will keep 5V and 3.3V isolated on the control boards. Still need to connect up the 3.3V. I will also not to create loops. Ground loops are very bad.

Stardate 98775.72 I connected the ground and 5V buses together around the control boards. Green: Ground Red: 5V I²C uses SDA and SCL connections. SDA: Serial Data: Data moves here SCL: Serial Clock: Clock sync here Mega 2560: SDA : pin 20 SCL: pin 21 Hero UNO: SDA: pin A4 SCL: pin A5 I checked each ground and power path with a multimeter to verify wiring. First, I split the power connections of the Arduino devices to separate locations on the boards. 5V is reading 4.99V. Then, I checked for ground loops. Finally, I also wired to limit the connection lengths. The bottom rows are I²C bus. On the control board by the Slave 4, You will notice some extra jumpers.

I was able to find a few SN74HC595N shift registers to connect the lighting up with. This saves on wire and ports of the controllers. I added 8 position dip switches and SIPO and PISO shift registers to this project.

Video Log on power bus and lighting

Code