Pedalfighter button selection

I’m picking up some new parts for the Arduino PedalFighter project that I started a while back.

My initial prototype was kind of disappointing due in part to the quality and size of the buttons that I used. I picked up some small 3/8″ buttons from Halted here in Silicon Valley. They were cheap and proved the working concept, but underfoot they were really lacking. The spring is too stiff, they are too small, and the action isn’t smooth. They tend to rock sideways a little bit when hit with the feet and click or get slightly stuck.

So, I set out to find some good quality arcade buttons that were low-profile enough to fit in a reasonable underfoot enclosure. After looking at the standard Happ switches I realized that the Sanwa buttons used in the stock MidiFighter were about the lowest around. What’s more is that there is a 30 mm diameter version of the same button, which I’m thinking will be awesome underfoot.

Here is the company’s info page for these buttons (in Japanese). I ordered mine for about 2USD each from Arcadespareparts. DJTechTools has the smaller 24 mm buttons for about the same price. Both of these places are a pretty good deal. If you need to buy in bulk you can get these on Ebay too.

So back to project. There are two different diameters and two different mounting styles. There is a snap-in panel mount and a threaded mount. The snap-in style is intended for use on thin metal panels and the threaded design is for thick plastic or glass panels. I’m going to try the snap fit, mostly because the colors that I wanted were easier to find. I ordered one of the threaded design just to check it out though.

The OSBF (snap-in) style button:

The OSBN (threaded) style button:

I actually just realized that they offer a 40 mm version of this button as well (OSBF-40), but I don’t see this offered for sale anywhere. I think the 40 mm version may only be offered in four different colors (one of which is baby blue). The reason I’m hoping that the OSBF series works is that there are more reasonable colors available (like black).

My order is in, so I’ll post some details about how they work out later on when they get here.