Competition sure brings out the brute in people, doesn’t it? So what do you do when you need a bunch of switches you can let people fist-pound or stomp on repeatedly without them taking damage? You could look to the guitar pedal industry and their tough latching switches, or you could simply build your own smash-resistant buttons as [wannabemadsci] has done.
The main thing about these switches is that they aren’t easily destroyed by shoes or angry fists. That’s because the shiny red push-me part of the button is made by cutting a foam ball in half.
Not easily crush-able Styrofoam, mind you — squishy, coated foam like an indoor football. This is mounted to the top of a sandwich made of hardboard and a couple pieces of easily-compressible foam from craft paintbrushes.
A brass washer is mounted to the middle of both pieces of hardboard, and these have wires soldered to them to read button presses. Then it’s just a matter of hooking it to a microcontroller like any other momentary.
There are all kinds of things you could cut in half for the top, like maybe tennis balls. Or, do what [Sprite_TM] did and use inverted plastic bowls.
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