I have been having issues with a couple of my builds (namely the fart box and the sequencer) and it turns out that bad arcade buttons seem to be the culprit. I ordered them from Aliexpress about a year ago.
I do not recommend these. Even though they have excellent integrated 12v LEDs and switches all in one nice package - I found out the reason why they were such a good deal at 20$ US for 20 of them. The quality of the switch mechanism is abysmal. They either do not fully depress every time, have seriously ‘noisy’ clicks and they make poor contact when held down. You can see the LED’s here:
The actual switch though is complete garbage.
The diffuser inside the switch presses directly down onto it, depressing the green bit. I test all of them now and they are all plagued by intermittent behavior. And a button that cant off (on) is not particularly useful.
I picked some of these from my local microcenter to do a comparison. At over twice the price, I had high hopes.
The first thing I noticed is that the Microcenter buttons are missing both the actual illumination source (sold separately at a 1$ per unit) AND they do not have the actual switching mechanism.
Now I am faced with the problem of finding bulbs and switches for the microcenter buttons. While I could get the led’s at microcenter, I dont suppose anyone has seen anything on Tayda or Mouser that would work and help me cut costs slightly? Also, has anyone seen the that go to these anywhere?
