Gene, I keep many of those small rotary encoders in my parts drawer. Some have better "feel" and the best ones have a click button feature where you can push the knob in as a momentary contact. With out the push feature they are not useful. $2 is a decent price. I've paid less but why care about 50 cents.
Yes, they are mechanical switches. You have to "de-bounce" them in either software or hardware as they can make and break contact. Some are better some worse. So DO make sure to de-bounce. In my software, after a change is detected I check the value many times in a loop with small delay after each check and stop reading after five checks give the same result. This method is very robust even for poor quality switches after you find a delay between checks that is good. Usually only takes a millisecond or so to settle. These are not nearly the same quality as optical encoders, they are noisy. The 100 detent knob with number on it is better for entering numbers like how far to move. With the small knob the user has to count clicks the is get annoying after 40 or 50 counts. I think the big wheel is best for jogs. It would take some effort to enter 40 click using the small encoder. But I really like the small knobs for giving the user a menu to select from. Get a small 2 line by 16 character LCD text display for under $5 and you update that display for every click of the rotary switch. Look at how a car radio works. They typically use the built-in push button to select the function (volume, tuning, bass boost,...) then you turn the knob to set the value. People seem to find this intuitive but you MUST use at least a small text display with a rotary switch or the user gets very confused. You can set or read many parameters with just one control. The small rotary knob could be used with the larger jog wheel to set the parameters like "distance per tick", "Imperial or metric", "Axis select X, Y, Z, ...) >From a user interface point of view I think these little rotary encoders are best used EXACTLY like they are on car radios. The jog wheel is best for jogging as it does not require the user to count Just remember that ALL mechanical contacts can bounce before they settle down While on the subject there is a third type: This is a bigger knob with more pulses per revolution and it turns smoothly with small detents. They are typically used for volume controls on home stereo and try to emulate the older pots of running capacitor. I've seen them on microwave ovens for sexting the time also. In software you can sense the rotational velocity and use this as a multiplier for how far each detent advances the number you are controlling. So if you turn it fast 90 degrees means 30 minutes but if you turn it slow 90 degrees is 3 minutes. People find this intuitive also. You'd want a 2" knob on this kind. Not good for a jog wheel but OK for setting some other numbers that have a wide range but need to be exact. These wheel are also way-cheap on eBay On Tue, Mar 21, 2017 at 10:58 PM, Gene Heskett <ghesk...@shentel.net> wrote: > Greetings all; > > While perusing the mpja.com catalog just now, I came across an item that > could be used as the jog dial, with very similar hal code, its an auto > radio etc power/volume control, stock 30403-SW on page 97, right hand > column. 2 bucks. -- Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
