Scratch Built Jog Wheel


[whatsisface] sent in his scratch built clone of a Griffin PowerMate. The PowerMate… is just a big knob, so it’s easy to see why more than one person has attempted this. [whatsisface] was inspired by a bit-tech post that did nearly the same thing, only they used the head out of a VCR for the knob. All the other components, like the optical encoder, are salvaged from a mouse, which we talked about in our scavenging How-To. He used a RC car tire for the actual knob. While we’re sure it works great in dirt, we’d probably go with the weight and inertia of the VCR head instead. Have a look at the video below to see the knob being used with the Volumouse software.

10 thoughts on “Scratch Built Jog Wheel

  1. “[whatsisface] sent in his scratch built clone of a Griffin PowerMate. The PowerMate… is just a big knob, so it’s easy to why more than one person has attempted this. “

    Rephrase asap.

  2. This is a repost
    -Optical control wheel utilizing mouse components-
    +Using USB2Midi you can use this to control a multitude of softwares. But alas this is old news.

    http://www.hackaday.com/2007/06/23/turntable-mouse-interface/

    http://terminatorx.org/turntable.html

    Picture link
    [url]http://terminatorx.org/pix/adam2.jpg%5B/url]

    http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/07/terminatorx_turntable_gal.html

    Where do you guys get these editors from? Reposts? Cmon guys…… trim the fat.

  3. Elliot- Did you even read my posting or did you just briefly glance at it?

    What I linked to, and has been posted here b4 is just what the above is = A linear single axis interface device – based off of hacking a mouse

    This is no different than opening up your trackball mouse and turning the slotted optical wheel yourself, except that instead you turn another wheel, and that turns the optical encodding wheel inside the mouse.

    I also feel the jogwheel hacks that was posted earlier are more advanced, as some utlilize the button inputs as well.

    This is harldy a hack- and is along the lines of stuffing shit into something and calling it a hack… remember the NES cellphone?

  4. #8 i built one of these a long time ago before the original of this repost got posted here. Anyway the reason i did it was simple because there are often times i have to go through huge freaking directories. mine however was done with a very heavy knob and nice new ball bearings so i can spin and scroll and stop when i need to. it is easier and crazy amounts faster than using a mouse

    but i’m with everyone else, i’m not sure why a repost is being posted as a hack….

  5. Built one of these out of boredom today. Sure, it’s a simple hack, but sometimes hacking isn’t about obscure tech or incredible feats, it’s just about something neat that someone did.
    Personally, I like the little bugger quite well, especially good in the morning when I’m too lazy to do anything but scroll anyway.

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