envelope generators

[Ray Peck]

>This made me think - Many mice (the computer sort) have optical encoders 
>that do exactly this sort of thing. The components for this ought to be 
>very cheap due to the vast quantities of mice everywhere.
>Hey, I probably have a couple of dead rodents in a drawer I could play
>with ...

You're darn right!

It should be pretty easy to make something that works.  Think "knob
attached to shaft with star lock-washer epoxied on, with led/photocell
pair being interrupted by the tangs of the star".

The problem with this and the mouse idea is getting it to "feel"
right.  You want it to feel smooth and have some resistance, or to
have lots of light detents like the parameter knob on my Lexicon
Vortex (which I wish had the "spinning the knob faster means make it
move more coarsely" algorithm).