Latching Power Switch 12v Toggle

FAQ: Do you have a 12v momentary contact latching relay or switch that can be toggled on/off?

If you have ever had trouble finding a latching relay that is toggled on/off by a momentary 12v pulse, here is a great solution.

Our main business is about providing roller blind motors, and this product came about because we had a critical need for a momentary contact switch during the development of our remote control system for LED lighting.

We wanted a lighting system that would complement our remote control 12v DC motors for blinds, shades and drapes, with the ability to have extended control by phone, tablet, laptop.

We needed a 12v latch using a momentary contact 12 volt switch that would power on our system, but that turned out to be an elusive item. Double pole latching relays require 2 switches to operate (not what we wanted), and regular single pole latching relays require polarity reversal to operate (not this either). We just wanted to toggle a circuit on and off with a single momentary contact switch.

After weeks of searching for a suitable solution, we were not able to find anything that would suit our exact requirements, so we decided to make our own, and thus the RSS project was born. We also decided to add an Arduino™ compatible microprocessor to it and make it really smart so that it could be easily adapted to work in other applications that may require a different solution.

Fast forward a few years and suddenly the amazing ESP32 microprocessor is available, with Micropython as a programming solution. In our opinion this represents a quantum leap forward in control and monitoring technology, and we quickly decided to migrate our systems to this platform.

The Espressif^® ESP32 is a very advanced microprocessor, with a full TCP internet WiFi stack (and radio) built into the chip. If you don't want to use WiFi, it also has a Blutooth BLE radio built into it, so the choice is yours.

The Espressif^® ESP8266 was the first generation MCU that accomplished this breakthrough feat, and the Espressif^® ESP32 improves on that in many ways. For instance, the ESP32 has the ability to boot from a cold start and connect to your wifi network in less than 1 second!

From our mission statement, you can see we are big proponents of solar technology, with the hope that we can help reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. The ESP32 is also a champion when it comes to power consumption. It has a deep sleep mode that consumes only 0.01 mA (1 mA = 1 milliAmp = 1 one thousandth of an Amp). That translates to a theoretical minimum current requirement of 10 microamps, giving it the ability to run on simple AA batteries for many years.

Advanced Features: A Versatile Control Platform

So what exactly is this device? You could say that it is a fully bootable computer, complete with operating system, solid state hard drive, system memory, and a USB port for program I/O. That's a lot of control power in a small, very affordable package.

We have developed a kit for controlling a group of blind motors with low voltage relays, but you could re-program it to do almost anything. The kit comes pre-loaded with Micropython programs for controlling the relays.

We sincerely hope you enjoy using these advanced switches; if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at any time! If you are interested in learning more, please see our Micropython kit for the ESP32.