Tilt Switch

[Patty]

I have tried both ball bearing and mercury tilt switches. So far, both
have kind of a stutter. That is, when you tilt them, the circuit is
closes, opens momentarily, then is closes again. I really need one
that doesn't have that momentary opening. Do you have any like that?

Thanks a lot for your help.

Trish

P.S. My angle of tilt requirement is flexible, but would ideally be
around 30 degrees.

 

[John Robertson]

Patty wrote:

I have tried both ball bearing and mercury tilt switches. So far, both
have kind of a stutter. That is, when you tilt them, the circuit is
closes, opens momentarily, then is closes again. I really need one
that doesn't have that momentary opening. Do you have any like that?

Thanks a lot for your help.

Trish

P.S. My angle of tilt requirement is flexible, but would ideally be
around 30 degrees.

Hi Patty,

This is a very common problem when interfacing the outside world to
electronics...the contacts bounce a bit before making a continuous
electrical close

So what you want is a debounce circuit added to your tilt switch. This
is usually taken care in software these days, but you can add a resistor
and a capacitor across the contacts to stretch the apparent closure time
constant enough that the switch will settle down to fully closed.

Some examples:

http://www.all-electric.com/schematic/debounce.htm
http://www.ikalogic.com/debouncing.php
http://www.elexp.com/t_bounc.htm

And so on...

John :-#)#

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