Bread Board Power Switch

Any recommendations on bread board power switches?

They will be used to turn on my 9v battery supplied bot and should snap in the bread board. My project has 2 power supplies, so 2 SPST or a single switch that can control 2 supplies (DPST?) are needed.

I tried some slide switches from Mouser, but they do not fit on the bread board very well. It took a plier to make them fit at all. The switch does not have to be a slide switch, but I am looking for cheap.

All ideas appreciated :slight_smile:

For DP switches, I doubt you can fit on a breadboard without shorting the DP into a SP. For SPDT switches, I used this one from sparkfun.com Friendly to breadboard. You can get two of these for your two power supplies.

They are $1.50 a pop. Anyone know a cheaper one, like from Digikey or Mouser?

Richard,

That switch has only 2 pins, am I right? How do you get two throw on it? Maybe it has another lead in the back?

I shop at dipmicro.com sometimes. They're in Canada so shipping to US is not too bad or too expensive.

http://www.dipmicro.com/store/index.php?act=viewCat&catId=548

To be honest, I would just take whatever I had and solder some wires to it to fit the board. Not worth that much aggravation, IMHO.

Point well taken. I have some switches that I manhandled with a plier to fit in a breadboard. They function okay, but fit kind of loose. I'm trying to make it solid enough that my ten-year-old son can turn it on without it falling apart. The same is true with regard to my other posts about molex connectors. Loose connections are very aggravating.

Thanks for the suggestions! I will order some.

I generally use hot-glue to fix whatever tricky things at the corners of the breadboard (pots, switches, connectors). It makes it more difficult to re-use them, but we are talking about a few $$ only...

David Cook's Robot For Beginners has one: Robot Building for Beginners - David Cook - Google Books

Switch is only good for .2 ma. I hope it does not burn out with 2 AA batteries powering a small, Tamiya dual motor gearbox.