Electronic – arduino – How to determine if a button would work with Arduino

arduino

I want to get a push button that looks cooler than the one that came with my Arduino Starter kit, but I'm not sure if any kind of buttons will just work. The button came with the Starter Kit looks like this:

enter image description here

I went to a local electronics store and they had different kind of buttons. Many of them are way larger than the one that came with the Starter Kit. The button that came with the Starter Kit has 4 leg pins, but I usually use only 2 of them. The buttons I see in the store have a variety of number of pins. Some buttons have 2 pins, some have 4 and some have more than 4. Some buttons are huge and I'm worried that they are not compatible.

I'm new to electronics. How do I determine if a button would work with Arduino? Would something like this one work?

enter image description here

Is there anything I have add or take note of for these buttons to work?

Best Answer

In short if your requirement is low voltage (<12v) and low current then most any switch you can buy from a local electronics store should be fine.

However there are lots of different types. Switches that are normally open, then close as you press them. Switches that are the opposite and are normally closed, then open when pressed. Some might latch, some might have multiple positions. As you say in your question there are switches with multiple pairs of connectors ("poles").

We can't easily identify from the photo what type of switch that is. If you post a part number and what you expect the switch to do then somebody can help.

Check out this tutorial from Sparkfun and see if it helps.