Adafruit
Rugged Metal Pushbutton - 16mm 6V RGB Momentary
By popular demand, we now have these buttons with a full color RGB LED ring light! These chrome-plated metal buttons are rugged, but certainly not lacki...
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By popular demand, we now have these buttons with a full color RGB LED ring light! These chrome-plated metal buttons are rugged, but certainly not lacking in flair. Simply drill a 16mm hole into any material up to 1/4" thick and you can fit these in place – there's even a rubber gasket to keep water out of the enclosure. On the front of the button is a flat metal actuator, surrounded by a plastic RGB LED ring. On the back there are two gold contacts for the button and 4 for the RGB LED ring (one anode and 3 cathodes for each red, green, and blue). Power the anode at 3-6V and light up the red, green, and blue LEDs by pulling their designated contacts to ground as you desire – there's a built in resistor! If you want to use this with a higher voltage, say 12V or 24V, simply add a 1K ohm resistor in series with the LED cathodes to keep the LED current at around 20mA. You can PWM the RGB pins to make any color you like.
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.
The switch and LED are electrically separated, so to change the color, use a microcontroller to both read the contact pins and toggle the color control pins.
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- LED
- A light-emitting diode (LED) is a small electronic component that emits light when current flows through it in the correct direction. Because it only conducts one way, its polarity matters, and a through-hole LED must be soldered the correct way around to light up.
- microcontroller
- A microcontroller is a small computer on a single chip that runs a stored program and controls connected inputs and outputs such as buttons, sensors, displays and communication interfaces. In a device built around one, it is the part that executes the code and coordinates the device's behaviour.
- PWM
- Pulse Width Modulation is a way for a digital pin to simulate variable output power by switching on and off very quickly. It matters for controlling things like LED brightness, motor speed, or servo-style signals from a microcontroller pin.
- RGB
- Short for red, green and blue, the three primary colours of light that are mixed in varying amounts to make a wide range of colours. In electronics RGB can refer to an LED or pixel that blends these three colours, or to a colour signal or interface that carries separate red, green and blue channels.
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