I'm a fan of physical, tactile buttons that provide visual feedback. I realize the current trend favors capacitive touch, but I love individual buttons I can find by feel. And one of the best looking buttons I've seen was from the 1992 movie Sneakers. When the blind character Whistler used a Braille-labeled device to add a sound effect representing the "thump" sound of a car going over seams of a concrete bridge.

They were only on screen for a few seconds, but I was enamored with the black buttons, each with a corresponding red LED. The aesthetics reminded me of 2001, like the eye of HAL in a mini monolith. Or maybe Darth Vader, if the Sith lord were a button. When I first watched the movie many years ago, I thought they were neat and left it at that. But in recent years I've started building electronics projects. So when I rewatched the movie recently and saw them again, I decided to research these buttons.

The first step is to determine if they were even a thing. All we saw was the front control panel of an unknown device. It was possible the buttons and LEDs were unrelated components sitting adjacent to each other on the circuit board, and only visually tied together by pieces of plastic custom-made for the device. So the first step was to find that device. There was a label at the bottom of the panel below Whistler's hand, but due to the shallow depth of field I could only make out the end as "... 2002 digital sampler". Time to hit the internet and see if anyone recognized the machine.

The first step is the Trivia section of the movie's page on Internet Movie Database where people contribute random and minute pieces of information. Firearms enthusiasts can usually be counted on to name specific guns used in a film, and automotive enthusiasts frequently contribute make and model of cars as well.

Sadly, the electronics audio enthusiasts have not felt fit to contribute to this page, so I went elsewhere on the internet trying various keyword combinations of "Sneakers", "Whistler", "sampler", etc. The answer was found in a comment to a Hackaday post about the movie. I've complained a lot about the general quality of internet comments, but this time one person's nitpicking correction is my rare nugget of gold.

Whistler's device is a Sequential Circuits Prophet 2002 Digital Sampler rack. As befitting the movie character, the sampler's control panel had Braille labels covering the default text. But otherwise it appears relatively unmodified for the movie. I wish the pictures were higher resolution, but their arrangement strongly implies the button and LED are part of a single subcomponent. The strongest evidence came from the presence of four vertical axis buttons, rotated 90 degrees from the rest.

Aside: On the far right of the control panel, we can see a sign of the era, a 3.5" floppy drive for data storage.

Encouraged by this find, I started searching for Prophet 2002 buttons. I quickly found an eBay community offering replacement parts for Sequential Circuits products including these buttons. What's intriguing to me is that these are sold in "New" condition, not surplus or salvaged from old units. I'm optimistically interpreting this as a hint these buttons might still be in production, decades after the Prophet 2002 was released in 1985.

Thanks to those eBay listings, I have seen a picture of the component by itself and it is exactly what I hoped it would be: the button's exterior surface, the electric switch itself, and the LED are integrated into a single through-hole component. Given the tantalizing possibility it is still in active production and something I can buy for my own projects, I went next to electronics supplier Digi-Key.

Digi-Key carries 305,212 components under its "Switches" section, not practical for individual manual review. Fortunately there are subsections and I first tried "Tactile Switches" (5721 items) because those buttons look like they'd give a good tactile response. In the movie we also heard a satisfying click when the button was pressed, but I don't know if that was added later by the film's sound mixer.

Within the "Tactile Switches" section, I aggressively filtered by the most optimistic wish they are active and in stock:

  • Part Status: Active
  • Stocking Options: In Stock
  • Illumination: Illuminated
  • Illuminator: LED, Red

That dropped it to 76 candidates. Almost all of them carried their illumination under the button instead of adjacent to it. The closest candidate is a JF Series switch by NKK Switches, the JF15RP3HC which has a Digi-Key part number 360-3284-ND.

It is a more modern and refined variant of the same concept. The button is sculpted, and the illuminated portion sits flush with the surroundings. This would be a great choice if I was updating the design, but I am chasing a specific aesthetic and this switch does not look like a monolith or Vader.

So that wasn't too bad, but I'm not ready to stop. Peer to "Tactile Switches" are several other subsections worth investigating. I next went to "Pushbutton Switches" (175,722 items) and applied the following filters. Again starting with the optimistic wish they are active and in stock:

  • Part Status: Active
  • Stocking Options: In Stock
  • Type: Keyswitch, Illuminated
  • Illumination Type, Color: LED, Red

That filter cut the number of possibilities from 175,722 down to 21 which felt like an overly aggressive shot in the dark, and I expected I would have to adjust the search. But it wouldn't hurt to take a quick look over those 21 and my eyes widened when I saw that list. Most of the 21 results had a very similar aesthetic and would make an acceptable substitute, but that would not be necessary because I saw the Omron B3J-2100.

Yes, I've hit the jackpot! Even if that isn't precisely the correct replacement for a Prophet 2002 sampler, it has the right aesthetics: a dark angular block with the round LED poking out. But now that I've found the component, I can perform web searches with its name to confirm that others have also decided Omron B3J is the correct replacement.

Omron's B3J datasheet showed a list of models, where we can see variations on this design. The button is available in multiple colors, including this black unit and the blue also used by the Prophet 2002. The number and color of LEDs add to the possible combinations, from no LEDs (a few blue examples on a Prophet 2002 have no lights) to two lights in combinations of red, green, or yellow.

Sure, these switches are more expensive than the lowest bidder options on Amazon. But the price premium is a small price to pay when I'm specifically seeking this specific aesthetic. When I want the look that started me on this little research project, only the Omron B3J-2100 will do. And yeah, I'm going to call them "Whistler buttons".

[Follow-up: This post became more popular than I had expected, and I'm glad I made a lot of fellow button enthusiasts happy.]