Wireless Remote Goes Bling Bling

November 22, 2011 AT 2:00 pm

Wireless Remote Goes Bling Bling

Wireless Remote Goes Bling Bling… Mikey writes –

We use a $7 wireless remote to turn on our hot spring pump. The remote has been melting away in the New Mexico sun for nearly two years. At this point the buttons and batteries have also failed. I decided to tear out the circuit board from our failed remote and give it a new bling bling home. I used a $8 outdoor electrical box and a pair of Adafruits blue LED buttons. I also used my CNC to cut some text into the cover plate and make a little circuit board to reduce the number of connections. It took about three hours to make everything.

Waterproof Metal Pushbutton with Blue LED Ring [16mm Blue Momentary]. These chrome-plated metal buttons are rugged and waterproof and look real good while doing it! Simply drill a 16mm hole into any material up to 1/2″ thick and you can fit these in place, there’s even a rubber gasket to keep any water out of the enclosure. On the front of the button is a flat metal actuator, surrounded by a blue plastic LED ring. On the back there are 3 contacts for the button (common, normally-open and normally-closed) and 2 for the blue LED ring (+ and -). Connect 3 to 6V to the LED to have it light up nicely, there’s a built in resistor! If you want to use this with a higher voltage, say 12V or 24V, simply add a 470 ohm resistor in series with the LED connection to keep the LED current at around 20mA.

This button is a momentary push button, when you press it the ‘normally-open’ contact shorts to the common contact. When you release it, the contacts open up again.