Hardware button time to failure

[AndySmee]

I've just completed a season using the Bangle2 as a cricket umpire's ball counter (find the Umpire app in the loader). It's worked really incredibly well as the battery life is so reliably good it's never failed me, even at late notice.

But on Sunday, in the last match of the season, I noticed that when I use the button I'm occasionally getting two events. I think this has begun to happen as the button is getting worn.

I have debounce code in the app which prevents double clicks of the BTN within, say, 100-200 ms, so these seem to be more mechanical doubling up.

The beauty of this use case is that I can tell you how many times I've pressed the button! I've completed over 1,000 overs of cricket, with 6 balls an over, with two button presses per ball (one to wake up, one to increment).

Has anyone else had any mechanical problems with the button, or is this a bit early for any mechanical breakdown?

[gfwilliams]

I have debounce code in the app which prevents double clicks of the BTN within, say, 100-200 ms, so these seem to be more mechanical doubling up.

Bangle.js itself does some debouncing (and you can ask it for something different when you use setWatch as well) so that might be handy. But if you're getting two events even after this, how far apart are they?

I guess it could be you're starting to get a slightly intermittent connection on the button. The buttons usually last quite a while though - I can't give you a figure, but while the very first (Kickstarter) batch had some issues, since then issues are reasonably rare given the amount of Bangles out there and the amount of use the buttons gets.

When you say you're adding the debouncing, do you think the fact there's a delay means that you end up really pressing the button quite hard to get it to work? I guess that could reduce the life of it

[AndySmee]

As you can appreciate, it's really difficult to tell reliably. However, my use case is such a repetitive use case that I think it is probably a true problem that is emerging. I've never had to press hard to get a response. I do press twice in quick succession, out of habit, to unlock then to log. The screen swipe up/down calls the same method with same application debounce and I don't get any doubling behaviour. I did check I wasn't swiping with my hand after the button press. So this seems unique to the btn. I'll experiment some more