This part has a page of its own, with a note on using it and a circuit to try: the part page.
Unlike the little tactile part in every kit, this is a lever microswitch: a snap-action blade that goes over center with a click, held by a plunger and a spring. It is under a real arcade cabinet's buttons and under most home-made controllers.
Pins
| Pin | What it does |
|---|---|
1 |
One side of the contact. |
2 |
The other side. |
Properties
color: the cap color, cosmetic only. bounce: off by default.
size: 30 (the default) or 24, the two snap-in sizes controllers use. Only
the picture changes; the switch is the same.
label: up to five characters printed on the cap, such as LP or Start.
key: a keyboard key that holds the button while the simulation runs, such as
u or ;. A controller is played with several buttons held at once, which a
mouse cannot do, so give each button its own key and play it from the
keyboard. The key is shown in a small badge beside the cap.
While it runs
Hold the mouse down on it while the simulation runs, or hold its key.
What the model gets right
Electrically it is the plainest part in the library: closed, the two pins are a
low-resistance contact passing whatever is on either side in either direction; open,
both are high impedance, with no notion of which pin is "in" and which is "out".
bounce is off by default here, where it is on for the pushbutton,
because a snap-action microswitch's datasheet quotes well under 5 ms of chatter, in
practice one or two edges, not a burst.
What it does not model
No mechanical travel or click force beyond the on-screen press. This is the electrical contact, not the plunger's feel.
With bounce on, the chatter is a fixed 2 ms pattern (one make, one rebound, one
settle) rather than the varying burst
the pushbutton generates, and it is the same on every press.
There is no contact resistance drift, no wear and no travel time between the press and
the contact.
Common mistakes
Expecting bounce behavior by default the way the pushbutton
has it. Turn bounce on in the properties panel if a lesson specifically needs
this switch to chatter too.
See it in action
Dice on an ESP32-C3, Pico arcade button and Stacker all use this as the one input. Open them at /templates.