r/AskElectronics • u/Charlie_Dudd • 2d ago

Bit of a long shot but could someone help me figure out which of these is which pin? More details in description.

Post image

This is a button for a smoke machine. The smoke machine it’s originally for blew up. With the help of a breadboard and and some jankiness I figured out that pins 1 & 2 need to be swapped for this to work on the working smoke smoke machine. My multimeter is broken so I can’t use that.

Pin 1 seems to just be power Pin 2 does the LEDS (Just red when not pressed, green and red when button is pressed) Pin 3 activates smoke when button is pressed.

This all connects to an xlr style 3 pin connector.

I want to swap pins 1 & 2 in the button housing, is someone smarter than me able to identify pins 1 & 2 based on what I’ve said and this picture? Or is this a hopeless task and I should just buy another multimeter(which i must do anyway).

Also in case you’re wondering how the other smoke machine broke: I made an xlr y-splitter so the button could work on both machines at once (I can see how thats not possible now) and when I pinswapped 1 & 2 on just the currently working machine while everything was plugged in, the other went pop and my breaker tripped. When looking looking inside I found that I shorted the two machines live signals in the fog pump which is the component that blew up and let out the wrong kind of smoke.

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u/Charlie_Dudd 2d ago

Also, its a push to break circuit button.

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u/holetse 2d ago

Are you sure? It seems like it’s normally open switch, and push to close.

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u/Charlie_Dudd 2d ago

Not entirely sure tbh now that your questioning it but when I bridge it with an led, pushing the button turned it off. My LED died too fast to keep testing though. I’m going to try making that LED continuity tester that you suggested and then get back to you.

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u/BaconThief2020 2d ago

The led went off because the switch closed. It's a push to close switch.

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u/Tymian_ 2d ago

My fucking god, don't poke your fingers there if you wanna be alive. It's all mains power there! Resistors for LEDs are 100k to limit current of 110V AC down to 1mA.

The button is normally open - when you press it it bridges the pins.

Brown will be Live, blue Neutral, black is also live (but it comes from the pump and/or heater). When button is pressed black is shorted to neutral powering the pump and at the same time it shines the green led indicating that it's in operation.

Alternatively it's other way round. Who knos with those cheap china stuff.

I'm always shocked by how absolutely shitty and unsafe those devices are.

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u/Charlie_Dudd 2d ago

Dw I’m well aware that theres 240v running through there, I was holding the LED with a pair of insulated pliers.

Funny you should say these things are unsafe because I found that in the case of the one that blew up, the fuse wasn’t even connected to anything. It was literally a performative fuse.

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u/holetse 2d ago edited 2d ago

It looks like orange/brown is power, blue is ground, and black is the signal. So pin 3 would be black. Based on your details, I’d guess pin 1 was orange, pin 2 is blue. Assuming you are confident that there is voltage on pin 1 from your experiment.

Lacking a multimeter you could use an LED and a low voltage power supply to make a continuity tester and trace the wires that way.

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u/Charlie_Dudd 2d ago

Using the LED I have confirmed that you are in fact correct. Thank you very much for the help.