[sdiy] rotary encoders

[ChristianH]

Well, what about misusing the "stepper motor controller", and letting
the motor move the knob? Then you wouldn't need any LEDs at all...

Some 15 years ago I toyed with a stepper motor from a dead floppy drive,
and found out that it outputs nice pulses when moved manually. Of course
I had an immediate vision of a wall of dead floppy stepper motors for
synth parameter control. Problem is to find lots of surplus stepper
motors at a competitive price - and they have to match the knob diameter
somehow for mounting.

Chris



On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 17:17:42 -0800 Tom Arnold wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 09, 2004 at 05:32:10PM -0500, bruce tovsky wrote:
> > i'm building a control surface with mucho knobs,
> > and the prospect of soldering 8 led's x 32 knobs
> > makes me a little nauseous... cough....
> 
> Make a small PC board that mounts the LEDs and rotary controller and has a
> ribbon cable coming off to run back to whereever.  Yeah, you still have to
> solder all the LEDs but it goes much faster.  I went one step further while
> playing with stepper motors as rotary controllers and put a scenix chip on
> the board to read the stepper motor and control the LEDs, but I never got
> much further then playing. ( ie : the huge sequencer I was working on never
> got far off the ground )