Keypads and Button Switches on the Arduino

Keypads used in the dropController
Digial keypad on the left. Analogue keypad on the right.

When I first started building the dropController and the camController I could not find suitable navigation keypads, the ones I did find were expensive or not really suitable, so I built my own. These were simple keypads and follow the normal wiring for press button switches. This means each of the push button switches is wired to a separate pin on the Arduino. This obviously means you need 5 pins. This was fine until I wanted to add extra solenoid valves and realized I didn’t have enough spare pins.

I starting looking for pre-made keypads again and came across the Keyes Keypad on Taobao. These are cheap and smaller than the keypads I made. They also use a single pin. These are analogue keypads that use a single analogue pin on the Arduino.

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