How to connect 10 toggle switches to an arduino board?

Other Hardware General Electronics
1

Hello,

I am in the process of making a remote control. I would like to connect 10 toggle switches (see image)

Toggle switch
Toggle switch998×562 14.4 KB

to my arduino boards so that I have 10 separate digital inputs of 0 or 1. How should I connect these? Is that also with resistors? If so, how?
Thanks in advance!

Greetings Yorbe

2

Center pin to GND, one of the other pins to an Arduino pin. Use the built-in pull-up resistor.

3

Yes, but you have to use also the VCC right?

4

No, no VCC needed.

20240327_165139
20240327_1651391920×2560 107 KB

5

Example code:

#define SWITCHON LOW

const uint8_t switchPins[] = {2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A0, A1};

void setup()
{
  Serial.begin(115200);
  for (uint8_t cnt = 0; cnt < sizeof(switchPins) / sizeof(switchPins[0]); cnt++)
  {
    pinMode(switchPins[cnt], INPUT_PULLUP);
  }
}

void loop()
{
  for (uint8_t cnt = 0; cnt < sizeof(switchPins) / sizeof(switchPins[0]); cnt++)
  {
    uint8_t pinStatus = digitalRead(switchPins[cnt]);

    Serial.print(F("Switch "));
    Serial.print(cnt);
    if (pinStatus == SWITCHON)
    {
      Serial.println(F(" is on"));
    }
    else
    {
      Serial.println(F(" is off"));
    }
  }
  delay(1000);
}

The code starts with a macro to make your code a little more readable. LOW and HIGH just mean that, SWITCHON makes it clear that LOW means that the switch is on.

The two for-loops use a calculation (sizeof(switchPins) / sizeof(switchPins[0]) to calculate the number of pins and iterate through the pins.

6

It's there but it's connected through a resistor internal to the processor. See S3 in the diagram below.

SwitchesAndLEDs
SwitchesAndLEDs1224×1108 280 KB

7

FYI

  • You also have the option of using one GPIO pin connected to an IR receiver.

image
image540×405 26.3 KB

8

@LarryD , is the image posted by @dougp yours? I would like to give credit if I use it.

9
  • Yes I drew it up.
    It can be found here:
  • It’s just a summary I put together.
10

It is VCC when you set pin mode to INPUT_PULLUP

pinMode( pin, INPUT_PULLUP );

that pin sources VCC through 20K to 50K resistance. It is very weak but it is VCC that you can safely ground. The pin reads LOW when grounded.