Buttons, Switches and Joysticks

Buttons and switches are among the most basic, and sometimes necessary, parts in an electronics project. They provide you with the means to interact with your code to display data on screens, turn on an LED, run a script, reset your board and more. Switches don’t require any fancy equations to evaluate - all they do is select between an open circuit and a short circuit. Simple. If HAL 9000 had had a single off switch, it would have made a lot of things easier!

Over the years, we've offered both common and unique buttons and switches in our catalog. Each and every one of the components we've offered, from momentary to maintained, SPST to DPDT, has usually been associated with a build, project or tutorial. You'd be hard pressed to find a design that doesn't include a button or a switch in one way or another.

A joystick is an input device that can be used for controlling the movement of the cursor or a pointer in a computer device. The pointer/cursor movement is controlled by maneuvering a lever on the joystick. The input device is mostly used for gaming applications and, sometimes, in graphics applications. A joystick also can be helpful as an input device for people with movement disabilities.