I spent several hours soldering through the possible combinations of wire connections on latching buttons for 3 pin and 4 pin buttons on my older hardware.
Psychotiller 3 wire buttons using latching mechanism. Probably only good for 10s. These have solder pads for fuses. Solder blob obscuring pads.
4 wire switches, Miami electric boards sold these. Latching mechanism, but solid specs and track record. I think @longhairedboy has experience with them.
DIYE 4 wire switch. Amazon special.
DIYE Electric Skateboard Power Switch 10AWG ON Off DIY Button Switch Anti-Spark High Voltage High Amp 180A 4-12S Longboard https://a.co/d/3bikwMA
Stock, looked like this:
Please post your switches and buttons. Wiring diagrams and functionality. I’m exhausted from the initial guess work of working out what is working and what is not. (All except the pcb with custom cnc’d heat sink work)
Oh yeah, here are 4 wire momentary switches for unity and stormcore esc’s.
If you’re stuck on buttons and switches or something here resembles your hardware, I’ll scrape off the liquid electric tape and show clear wiring. Eventually, I’ll diagram the connections, largely bc I need a place for google to find answers to my queries when I google this in 6 months.
Call me crazy but I’ve always wanted to see or make a self healing, high current mercury switch for esk8. I’m not sure it would work, though. I love switches.
Yes, but I suspect there could be a solution. Something like an hourglass shape that prevents the mercury from escaping under extreme vibration. The top and bottom could be separated by a very small funnel, it could even be a zigzagging funnel if necessary.
A lot of them blew up though for unknown reasons. Another downside at the time was the latching switches which are notoriously prone to vibrational damage.
You want momentary buttons, so look for options that support those. I only use ESCs that can use them and have built in switching at this point, but a good momentary activated higher current discreet fet switch would be ideal for boards using ESCs without that.
I recall a shitload number of these switches have been stuck open (like it’s blown but not cutoff, just not a switch anymore. Always ON).
Voltage spikes at turn off and current inrush would kill them. I think it had to do with no pre charge steps and gate drivers would give up. Or I mix a bit, been years ago.
There were attempts to make higher current versions, up to 6 FETs instead of 2. All would eventually die the same way. Stuck open.
There is Flipsky Smart Switch models derived from Gamer43 Anti spark switch design, which supposedly resolved these issues? I didn’t have any unit to personally try.
I have schematics and shit of various designs but gave up on switches for now, there’s no perfect reliable contender for DIY.
Going loopkey till I can afford an engineer to do a switch
If any madlad wanna step up, here’s your to do list :
soft latch single button
one version for at least 12S, one version for at least 20S (if you can do more, push it but yea packages and references and all are bitches when you wanna scale voltage up)
small enough to fit in enclosures
high current enough to be usable with monster battery packs
maybe add boltable screw power plugs instead of soldering cables. This way is easy as fuck to adapt to whatever cables, plugs, etc we wanna use.
if you go microcontroller route, add push to start it’s always nice
