3PDT Toggle Switch

Other Hardware General Electronics
1

Hi there! I was wondering whether it is possible to use a 3PDT toggle switch to control the direction of a motor I am using.

Basically the idea is that when it is flicked to one side, a pin on the Arduino (say Pin 5) is now reading high, and if it were flicked to the other side another pin (say Pin 6) now reads high.
I can then use code so that when one pin or the other reads high, the motor will rotate in a certain direction, am I making sense?
Whatever the case, I have never wired a Toggle switch before and am having some difficulty with respect to that!

Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks
Al

2

Hi there! I was wondering whether it is possible to use a 3PDT toggle switch to control the direction of a motor I am using.

You can use an on-off-on toggle switch like below, no arduino needed.

3

Thanks I'll have a look into that.

4

Slight problem my switch has 9 terminals not 6, is there no way I can hook it up to two pins on the Arduino for High/Low signals?

5

If you don't need all 3 poles, ignore the extra ones.

6

No I will be needing all 3 poles since I wish to have the far right switch one thing on and the far left switch another thing on.

7

You need 2P2T to control the motor, that leaves a single pole to switch something else. If you want to switch two "other things" you need a 4P2T switch.

I can then use code so that when one pin or the other reads high, the motor will rotate in a certain direction, am I making sense?

So do you want the Arduino to control the motor based on switch inputs, or the switch to control the motor. They are two totally different concepts.

Rob