I've learned a lot about the DOs and DON'Ts of Breakout Boxes. Here are a few of them all in one place. Hopefully this helps others that are looking for help.
The first thing is wiring. The first gen BoB had awful push clips that broke with a bit of pressure - I'm glad they switched to screw terminals on the current version. Sadly there is one glaring flaw that remains with the BoB and that is how to wire all the commons together. On my first iteration I wired them all together with a wire nut. I'm not a fan of that approach now for a couple of reasons: 1) it is hard to be sure that every common wire is connected - there is a higher failure rate that a common wire will come out of contact. 2) If you ever want to replace one of the inputs you have to undo the wirenut - again this can lead to issues keeping them all connected together. My approach was to go with a terminal block. I found this one on ebay for just a couple of dollars (including shipping). 7 separate terminals is perfect - each input's common/ground wire gets its own screwdown and one more to wire into the BoB:
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The BoB can support up to 6 inputs at a time. On the terminal block there are inputs 1-6, RSV and GND. RSV is reserved, and you should not plug anything into that. GND is ground - or common. This is the wire that needs to be connected to one wire for each of your inputs. The other wire from each input is attached to one of the inputs on the BoB (I1-I6).
Personally I like to "tin" each wire that I put into a terminal block. Use a soldering iron and a bit of solder put a thin coat on the end of each wire. If you're using stranded wire then make sure to give a light twist to the strands to keep them all together. The advantage of tinning stranded wire is that you won't get one of the strands accidentally shorting out a neighboring input. It will also make a better electrical connection with the screw in the terminal block.
If you have to extend the wires on your float switches or whatever inputs you're using, then do yourself a favor and use two different color wires - say red and black. Once you have a bundle of 12 wires coming in, you'll have a much easier time sorting them out when half of them can easily be identified for being wired together. If you do extend the wires, my favorite way is to solder them together and then use some heatshrink tubing to cover over the solder joint. The heatshrink tubing will keep the moisture and salt out and prevent corrosion. Some heatshrink tubing is waterproof, but if at all possible avoid submerging your homemade connections. Home Depot/Lowes sell the stuff.
Now is also a good time to use a label maker and put a label on each of the input wires. If you ever have to replace your BoB, or otherwise services the inputs it is nice to know which is which afterwards.
If you don't use all the inputs then consider shorting one of them out. I don't know who first came up with this idea (I first saw it somewhere on this forum) but its a great idea. Basically the idea behind shorting one of the inputs out is so that you can alarm on the condition that your BoB becomes accidentally disconnected. Set an alarm condition of that shorted input ever goes to "OPEN".
Lastly I like to assign each input to a Virtual Outlet. You get to use longer names for Outlets than you do inputs so that you can be more descriptive. Second, I like to name each input and configure it so that they are all "Off" in their normal state and "On" when they are triggering. Depending on the application too, you might consider added a short "Defer" statement. For example if you have a Normally Open float switch, and you have your virtual Outlet turn to "ON" when the float closes then do a "Defer 000:15 Then On" to delay the action to turn on by 15 seconds. This can be useful for countering borderline conditions where the switch opens/closes repeatedly which might cause issues elsewhere with pumps etc.
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By doing this, it becomes very natural and easy to sweep visually through Fusion to see if anything is abnormal. If anything is "On" it stands right out.
Anyway - I hope this is useful to others!
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