How to 3-way touch dimmer without parasitic drain?

[rooshio]

Hello, I have a simple LED panel made of 5V led strips (SMD2835) that I want to control with a non-mechanical switch. This 3-way capacitive dimmer switch might do the trick, but like other capacitive touch sensors, I assume it's always using current. Since the panel is powered by an 18650 pack and will sit unused for long periods of time, I'm hoping to avoid parasitic drain inherent with a capsense button design. What are your suggestions for some alternative non-mechanical, touch switch options?

I was thinking that perhaps my finger could close a gap between two exposed leads, serving as the 2nd "resistor" in a voltage divider circuit, and using that signal to drive a mosfet gate, closing a soft latching switch to power a microcontroller (or perhaps an IC) to control the brightness levels.

I'm not opposed to having 2 buttons (i.e, 1 to latch the power, another to cycle voltage levels), even if one "button" is shorting a lead and the other is a true capsense button after the circuit is switched on.

Thanks for your suggestions!

[gilshultz]

Why not use a button that when pressed powers the Arduino, that then shorts the button keeping it on. Let it do its thing then it turns itself off, almost no standby current and no removing leds etc from the Arduino. There are a lot of circuits on the web that show this. This schematic is from instructables. Search for "arduino auto shutdown"