Momentary Switches

[Jediseth]

I thought I would help some people out by giving some information on momentary switches.  These switches on my two saber here on the post are not momentary. They are latching switches.  Momentary switches only work while your pushing the switch.  Like your car starter as soon as you stop pushing on it it resumes. Many people including some on this forum don't seem to use the term correctly. I just thought I would help straighten out the confusion. 

[scifidude79]

Momentary switches only work while your pushing the switch.  Like your car starter as soon as you stop pushing on it it resumes.

Those are momentary switches.  The black button is an indicator that the guarded switch is momentary and, to my knowledge, US doesn't sell lighted latching AV switches.  If you used those switches with a stunt setup, you would have to hold the button down to keep the saber on.  What makes the saber turn on and stay on is the sound board.  When you press a momentary switch on a sound saber, it engages the Obsidian sound board.  After that, the switch is basically not activated anymore, the board is "driving" the saber.  A short press of the switch while it's on will put you into lock-up mode and take you back out, a long press turns the board (and saber) back off.  And, a long press while it's off on the V4 puts you into font selection mode.  So, yes, those are momentary switches.  They just don't seem to act like momentary switches on a sound setup because they turn on the saber.

A latching switch is a simple open/close switch that completes the circuit.  It latches so that you don't have to continually hold down the button.

[Jediseth]

I may be getting schooled here. Interesting that the sound board would do that. I just found it odd that when I let go of the switch it's still engaged and people were calling them momentary.

[scifidude79]

Well, in this application, the switch acts like it's latching.  There's even a tiny board called a momentary to latching converter that you can buy to wire into a stunt.  With that board, the momentary switch acts like a latching switch.  Without some kind of board to tell the saber to stay on, the momentary switches are basically dead man's switches.

I see you don't have any stunts.  With those and their latching switches, there's an audible click when the switch engages and disengages.  Plus, on the AV style ones, the button stays partially depressed.

[Jediseth]

Thanks  scifidude79, your right I don't own any stunts, but I'm going to get one one of these days.  Thanks again
For helping me with that.

[scifidude79]

No problem.

[Isola815]

And just to make it even worse, don't forget that some people refer to latching switches as maintained switches, and if you ever see maintained-momentary it will depend on if it's listed on on-off or off-on as to what the maintained state is. So some will be NO and some will be NC.



Science!