How does the digital watch keypad work

keypad

I have had the same digital watch model for many years. Although they inevitably break again and again, I continue to buy the same model (A Casio 53W). I now have quite a collection of them sitting on a shelf for no real reason, but today when I was cleaning up I decided to take one apart.

Inside, I found that the keypad was actually quite interesting. Here's a picture.

photo

I was curious how it actually worked. I couldn't find any connectors; only multiple stacked layers of plastic with a conductive material leading from each button.

How is the signal from the button interpreted by the components inside?

Best Answer

It's probably an array of buttons, but with a confusing looking layout. Where the MCU will compare which row and column is live. Here is a button array available from eBay for an Arduino.

Button Array

You can see that there isn't a pin for every button, only for every row and column.