Looking for a 4 position switch

Projects General Guidance
1

Glade and other companies make these automatic air fresheners that have a 4 position switch.

1 off
2 low
3 medium
4 high

How can I duplicate this with an arduino? Is there a switch avaiable that can duplicate this? Obviously I would have to have the battery hooked up to this, in addition being able to read position 2-3.

2

[u]Here[/u] is an example of a 4-position rotary switch. A multi-position rotary switch is easier to find than a multi-position slide switch. You can also find rotary switches with an adjustable stop, so they might have 10 or 11 positions, but they can be adjusted-down to fewer positions.

Or... Once you've got a programmable microcontroller, it's possible to use a single button that cycles-through the functions/variables (maybe with 3 LEDs to indicate low, med, high), or an "up" button and a "down" button, or 3 separate speed buttons, and an on-off-switch, etc.

3

Something like this?

Left is probably off, then pin one connects to 2,3,4 if you keep sliding to the right.

4

You might like to consider something like this.

It has a total of 12 positions, but there is an adjustable end stop (it's hidden underneath the mounting nut), that enables you to select anything between 2 and 12 positions,

One basic switch can be re-configured to be many different 'ways'.

5

liudr:
Something like this?

1825161-2 TE Connectivity ALCOSWITCH Switches | Switches | DigiKey

Left is probably off, then pin one connects to 2,3,4 if you keep sliding to the right.

How can you tell left is off? The datasheet doesn't really say. Can anyone make sense of this?

6

How can you tell left is off? The datasheet doesn't really say. Can anyone make sense of this?

Since you're looking for a 4 position switch, its the SP4T version shown. Terminal 3 is common, from left to right it switches 1-3, 2-3, 3-4, 3-5.

Note that its specified as MAKE-BEFORE-BREAK.
What this means is there is never any "open" state as the switch is moved from left to right and there are 2 terminals shorted to common in between positions. Here, I've added the in between states to show what happens (left to right):

POS1          POS2          POS3          POS4
1-3   1-3-2   2-3   2-3-4   3-4   4-3-5   3-5