We really dig the retro-futuristic look of this Chunky Power Switch. Reason one, it looks like it belongs on the USCSS Nostromo from Alien. Reason two, it’s a great switch!
You may have seen similar switches for machinery and robotics. It has a hefty metal box, two well labeled buttons, and a hole for a power cord to go through. A thumbscrew allows fast access to the inner wiring. You can connect/disconnect up to three pairs of wires. Inside are 3 SPST switch contacts. Pressing the ON button will connect all three, pressing the OFF button will disconnect them. Great for remote control projects where you want to make it fast and easy to enable and disable.
The sticker on these says it’s rated for 380VAC / 1.5kW but we don’t recommend it for anything over 24 V and 10 Amps.
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.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.