White Papers
Don’t Use Old Switch Technology in Today’s Modern Electronic Circuits!
Mechanical switch technology has been around since the days of Thomas Edison. It was designed to prevent destructive contact arcing when a high-current circuit is broken. These switches are still fine for switching AC/DC current such as lighting, washers, dryers, garbage disposals, air conditioners, etc., but they have some serious drawbacks when it comes to today’s electronic circuits. The primary drawback is switch bounce. The other drawback is that their functionality is quite simple: either open or closed. More advanced functions like push-on/push-off and handshaking are not supported.
With a traditional mechanical switch, there is no clean contact when it opens and closes. Instead, there are mechanical rebounds where the contacts continue to open and close repeatedly until they settle into the new position. In addition, the snap action of the mechanical switch tends to augment the intensity of the bounce, which adds to the duration of the bounce.
Switch bounce, if not handled properly, can cause system malfunctions that may lead to disastrous effects in the military, automotive, medical, avionic, and industrial systems. LogiSwitch’s NoBounce™ technology is based on adaptive proprietary algorithms that have proven to be robust over years of use in real-world deployments.
The Benefits of LogiSwitch's NoBounce Technology
This paper discusses the risks that switch bounce and noise can have on a system and how NoBounce™ technology eliminates these threats and delivers clean, no bounce inputs to the system. This is accomplished by a proprietary set of algorithms that are continuously adapting to the switch’s ever-changing characteristics delivering a clean noise free and debounce free signal to the system over the lifetime of the system and over the wide range of operating conditions. Designing in NoBounce eliminates the risk of noise and switch bounce induced failures.
Polling vs. Interrupt Driven Switch Service Routines
Electrical Switch Terminology
This is a very in-depth blog by Clive Maxfield on electrical switch terminology. Clive is our Chief Technology Officer and member of our Technical Advisory Board.