A button is a button, and a switch is a switch, but these translucent arcade buttons are in a class of their own. Particularly because they have LEDs built right in! That’s right, you’ll be button-mashing amidst a wash of beautiful light with these lil’ guys. They’re the same size as common miniature arcade controls, and they require a 30mm diameter hole for mounting. Thus, they are sometimes referred to as 30mm diameter.
The buttons screw in place, so you can use with up to ~15mm thick material, and will cover up if the hole if it isn’t perfectly round and clean. The action is smooth, without a strong click, yet you can definitely feel when the button is pressed. A tiny micro-switch is pre-installed with gold plated contacts.
Even unlit, they look fantastic: all of the colors have a crystal translucent glossy look. As noted they have two surface mount LEDs with resistors built in, buried in the button body. Next to the switch contacts are two additional contacts for powering/controlling the LEDs. The two LEDs are connected in series with a ~1K resistor, so you can power the LED from a microcontroller pin or direct from 5V (say USB) with 5mA draw.
Note that the Red and Yellow versions of these LED buttons cannot run at 3.3V because the LEDs are in series! 5V or higher is required.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: A Fabulous Year for Python on Hardware and Much More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
