Collin Cunningham has a way with breaking down components to the basics and makes understanding them abundantly easy. He’s like the science teacher I always wished I had. In this Collin’s Lab video, he gives a comprehensive overview of the humble switch, demonstrating switches of the toggle, DIP, slide, rocker, rotary, and momentary variety, and explains the difference between SPST and DPDT switches in the process.
Here’s his original intro:
Easily overlooked, but elemental to electronics hardware, the manually operated switch is the simplest of electromechanical devices — and likely the most familiar. While the most basic switch is… well, quite basic, there’s a crazy-huge variety of switch types and sizes available to the electronics maker nowadays. Those new to the soldering and schematics scene will surely benefit from an introduction to some of the terms and formats relevant to various switch species.
Collin’s video is perfect for folks just getting started, and would even be a great resource for teachers:
10 thoughts on “Switches Made Simple”
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Thank you – THANK YOU – so much for this *NOT* being one of those terrible and unreadable “slideshows” that Make has been using lately.
Hear, hear!
I always enjoy your videos. Can you do one about various kinds of motors?
Collin left some switches on the table. Tilt, make before break, break before make, knife (for those with a steampunk bent), micro, pressure. Not to mention how switches operate to keep internal arcing down, which leads to an explanation of why the light switches in your room are called “snap” switches. From there you should at least give a nod to the switches cousin, the relay.
Collin, I “had” to hack into my old GE alarm clock to “fix” the button action. It has a similar design of the remote in your video; momentary buttons with conductive material. However, I was surprised to see that the “conductive” material seemed to be nothing more than rubber. Does rubber have some conductive properties?
BTW, love your show.
Rick