TITLE: Sensor matrix minimal wiring
QUESTION [6 upvotes]: I was doing the wiring of the sensors on my pinball machine and that lead me to an interesting optimization problem. There are 35 on/off sensors on the playfield of the machine. Behind the playfield, all those sensors need to be connected to a multi-pin connector, which in turn is connected to a microcontroller. I want to minimize the amount (total length) of wiring.
The sensors are connected to the connector using matrix wiring. This means that there are row-wires and column-wires. Every sensor is connected to one row-wire and one column-wire. Multiple sensors can use the same row-wire or the same column-wire, but each sensor needs a unique row-wire/column-wire pair.
We have a set of sensors $S = \{S_1, S_2, \dots,S_N\}$ and a connector $C$, which all lie in a metric space with distance function $d$. We could also say that $S \cup \{C\}$ is the set of vertices of a positively weighted complete graph. (2D Euclidean space may be assumed if that makes it easier) 
We need to find two partitions of $S$: a row partition $S_r$ and a column partition $S_c$, under the condition
$$\forall\ x \in S_r,\ y \in S_c:\ |x \cap y| \le 1.$$
The goal is to find partitions that minimize the total wiring length
$$
T=\sum_{x \in S_r} W(x \cup \{C\}) + \sum_{y \in S_c} W(y \cup \{C\}).
$$
Here $W(z)$ is a function that gives the total weight of the minimum spanning tree that connects all elements of $z$.
What is a fast algorithm to find optimal or reasonable $S_r$ and $S_c$ to minimize $T$?
Note: It is possible to use even less wiring if we allow a wire to split in different directions at a point that is not a sensor or connector, but to keep it simple let's not use that possibility.
Example
In the image, the black circles are the sensors, the red circle is the connector, the blue lines are the row wires and the green lines are the column wires.
Here we have $S_r = \{\{S_1,S_2,S_4\},\{S_3,S_5,S_6\}\}$ and $S_c = \{\{S_1,S_3\},\{S_2\},\{S_4,S_5\},\{S_6\}\}$. The wiring here is arbitrarily chosen by me, I don't know if it's optimal.

Idea
We don't have to consider combinations that have a minimum spanning tree with $C$ as an internal vertex.
For example, in the example above we don't have to consider any partitions that contain $\{S_2, S_6\}$, because $C$ is in the middle of $S_2$ and $S_6$, and we might just as well take $\{S_2\}$ and $\{S_6\}$ separately. However, it is still necessary to look at supersets of $\{S_2, S_6\}$.
Data
Here the $(x,y,z)$ locations of the controller (first in the list) and the 35 sensors:
[[46,21,2],[20,38,0],[20,32,0],[20,27,0],[20,22,0],[20,16,0],[20,40,4],[21,34,3],[21,22,3],[23,12,4],[27,48,1],[33,28,3],[33,11,4],[57,48,4],[48,46,4],[40,42,4],[41,15,0],[46,28,4],[42,33.5],[44.7,34.5,15],[47.4,35.5,15],[50.1,36.5,15],[52.9,37.5,15],[55.6,38.5,15],[58.3,39.5,15],[61,40.5,15],[59,11,4],[76,17,4],[78,10,0],[78,6,0],[105,24,0],[97,18,3],[97,37,3],[76,39,4],[79,43,0],[79,47,0]]

There are some obstacles below the playfield, so Euclidean distance is not entirely accurate, but for now that's good enough.

REPLY [3 votes]: You can solve the problem via mixed integer linear programming.  The idea is to design, for each of the two partitions, a minimum-cost network that enables sending one unit of flow from the connector (node $0$) to each node in $S=\{1,\dots,N\}$.  Let $A$ be the directed arc set, with distances $d_{i,j}$, and let $P=\{1,2\}$ be the set of partitions.  For $(i,j)\in A$ and $p\in P$, define nonnegative flow variable $x_{i,j,p}$ and binary variable $y_{i,j,p}$ to indicate whether $x_{i,j,p}>0$.  For $\{i,j\} \subset S$ and $p\in P$, let binary variable $t_{i,j,p}$ indicate whether nodes $i$ and $j$ appear together in the same part of partition $p$.  The problem is to minimize $\sum_{i,j,p} d_{i,j}\ y_{i,j,p}$ subject to linear constraints:
\begin{align}
\sum_{(j,i) \in A} x_{j,i,p} - \sum_{(i,j) \in A} x_{i,j,p} &= 1 &&\text{for $i \in S$ and $p \in P$} \tag 1\\
x_{i,j,p} &\le N\ y_{i,j,p} &&\text{for $(i,j) \in A$ and $p \in P$} \tag2\\
y_{i,j,p} + y_{j,i,p} &\le t_{i,j,p} && \text{for $0<i<j$ and $p \in P$} \tag3\\
t_{i,j,p} + t_{i,k,p} - 1 &\le t_{j,k,p} &&\text{for $0<i<j<k$ and $p\in P$} \tag4\\
t_{i,j,p} + t_{j,k,p} - 1 &\le t_{i,k,p} &&\text{for $0<i<j<k$ and $p\in P$} \tag5\\
t_{i,k,p} + t_{j,k,p} - 1 &\le t_{i,j,p} &&\text{for $0<i<j<k$ and $p\in P$} \tag6\\
\sum_{p\in P} t_{i,j,p} &\le 1 &&\text{for $0<i<j$} \tag7
\end{align}
Constraint $(1)$ sends a net of one unit of flow to each node in $S$.
Constraint $(2)$ enforces $x_{i,j,p} > 0 \implies y_{i,j,p}=1$.
Constraint $(3)$ enforces $(y_{i,j,p} = 1 \lor y_{j,i,p} = 1) \implies t_{i,j,p}=1$.
Constraints $(4)$, $(5)$, and $(6)$ enforce transitivity of togetherness.  Constraint $(7)$ prevents each pair of nodes in $S$ from appearing together more than once.
This formulation yields the expected results for your $N=6$ instance.  Here's the best solution I found so far for your $N=35$ instance:
\begin{equation}
\{1,2,4,8\}, \{3,6,7,11\}, \{5,9,12\}, \{10,15,17,18,19\}, \{13,22,23,33,34\}, \{14,20,21\}, \{24,31,32\}, \{25,26,30\}, \{27,28,29\}\\
\{1,6,10\}, \{2,11,17\}, \{3,4,5\}, \{7,8,9\}, \{12,16\}, \{13,14,15\}, \{18,21,23,24\}, \{19,20,22\}, \{25,28\}, \{26,27,32,33\}, \{29,30,31,34\}
\end{equation}
The objective value is $1027.5151123$.
Update: I now have a solution with objective value $972.68643098$.  Also note that the minimum spanning tree cost is $309.47533082$, yielding a lower bound of twice that for the original problem.