Switch Testing
This how-to video is on testing switches for rocket electronics. It examines the performance of normal switch functions: on and off, plus their behavior in stress conditions. (running time 5m).
The testing board, which Bob Feretich helped me design, has two rails: +3v (two alkaline batteries) and ground. The taps for testing come off above swich which is at 3v when off, and drops to ground via a pull-down resistor in line with the switch when off.
Data aquisition was doing using a MCC USB-201 which is easy to interface to any computer, but the software from MCC is Windows only.
The shaker was purchased from Controlled Vibration, along with an amp to power what appears to be basically a speaker. The input was a square wave at various frequencies from a standard function generator.