Does it have to be one of the Ipod wheels ?
Couldn't you do the same with an ordinary rotary encoder, maybe with a large knob on it ?

Rotary encoder was my starting point. Which isn't bad, but I would my control surface to be as flat as possible. A touchwheel would be much more appropriate. Not necessarily an iPod wheel, but I thought since the component is so cheap it would be great if I could incorporate it into my design.

While on the subject, does anyone know of any jogwheel "wheel"/knob component manufacturers? I couldn't find a single one, anywhere. The biggest knob I found on Rapid Electronics was about 35mm diameter, and quite tall too (16mm), so not ideal. I could probably knick one from some old hifi or car stereo amplifier, but I was wondering if you guys knew of any jogwheel knobs sold separately, on their own?

Really appreciate your ideas! Thanks guys.

My aim is to build an edit controller for Steinberg Cubase (or Nuendo). They've got excellent key mapping / macro facilities, so pretty much anything can be automated via keyboard shortcuts (fades, trimming, timing etc). As long as I could get a clickwheel / jogweel talking to Arduino, it would be a matter of minutes to assign the commands in Cubase. Unfortunately, my electronics knowledge is below basic. And I don't know how to connect this clickwheel to the Arduino Diecimila board I've got. I've worked with hardware audio editors in the past (such as the AMS Neve Audiofile SC) and I think a touchwheel / clickwheel would be a very attractive alternative.

It would be great if someone could help me stupid figure out how to connect this clickwheel to Arduino!  :

Just found this post. Paul explains:

I had the idea that it might not be too much of a hassle to implement a scroll wheel with just an Arduino. You would only need one "send" pin and maybe four or five "receive" pins, all linked to the send pin with 1 M resistors. You would then send a "burst" (cycle of square waves) from the send pin, to each receive pin (in order). After reading each pin (see the reference) it would be flipped to an input with pinMode().

Hmmm... Quantum QWheel technology sounds exactly what I'm after. But I have no idea how to implement QT510 / QT511 / QT1106 in an Arduino design... Any thoughts?

How would you connect this to Arduino Diecimila? Also, is that analogue or digital? Thanks.

This article on iPod clickwheel explains the principle of how capacitive sensing works. But how would I go about connecting one of these to Arduino?
Should I simply abandon the idea?  :

Thanks!

I'd like to use an iPod Nano clickwheel component (widely available for around $10 each on Ebay, Amazon etc) to control my software via Arduino. Is it at all possible to make it work with Arduino?

For example:
this one
this one
this one
or this one

Ideally, it would be Synaptics RoundPad, but I couldn't find any part suppliers.

All I want it to do is Arduino to repeatedly simulate keystroke/shortcut "A" when finger is moving clockwise (incrementing) and keystroke "B" when finger is moving counter-clockwise (decrementing). This is to be used as a "jogwheel" for an edit controller I'm building.

Is this possible? Any advice would be very much appreciated!

Many many thanks in advance!

Thanks guys!

I think I've solved the mystery. It wasn't a component-related issue, I had it all connected the way you suggested. So I've decided to give SimpleMessageSystem a go instead of Pduino, just to see if it makes a difference...
Now I'm getting correct values! Both the LDR and the potentiometer now transmit values within a full range of 0-1024! 10-bit! Excellent stuff!
The only thing I'm not very happy with is latency (I guess that's due to value sampling rate or something) - if I twist the knob rather quickly, values jump in huge steps. Like 0-100-300-600-1000-1024 (6 steps). Is there a way to smooth value changes? I've implemented a workaround within Pure Data, but it's not very responsive (values change smoothly, but with a noticeable delay, so not ideal for real-time audio applications). Anyway, I guess I shouldn't be complaining. It's only set me back £20 to build this interface. I can certainly live with that...

Thanks for your help! Very much appreciated!

By the way, I used a potentiometer as well and there the problem is that as I rotate it, it remains at 0 and I only get values to change at the last couple of degrees. So it quickly changes from 0 to 0.956 or something. Hmm...

Hi everyone.
I've received my Arduino this morning and I'm already having some amazing results. I'm a sound artist and my electronics knowledge is next to none, however I'm surprised how easy it is to implement some very powerful interactivity features into my work! Top stuff!

Anyway, I have a question...

I'm experimenting with a Light Dependent Resistor I bought from Maplin:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=35963&doy=17m7

Spec:
Min. resistance @ 10lux:      9k[ch937]
Max. resistance @ 10lux:      22k[ch937]
Typ. resistance @ 100lux:      7k[ch937]
Dark resistance after 1 sec.:      0.05M[ch937]
Dark resistance after 5 sec.:      0.15M[ch937]

It works, however the readings I'm getting in Pure Data (using Pduino) are of incredibly low values! Something like 0.001-0.020 when lit with flashlight from about 1-0.5 cm distance. I bump it up digitally (multiply by 1000) to get higher numbers, but then I'm getting horrible step increments. Is there a way to increase sensitivity of this component? Or is this a software configuration issue?
I'm using a 1k resistor in the chain. Could this be an issue?
Did I get a wrong type of LDR?

I'm eager to learn.

Many thanks in advance!

Hi Paul,

I am very interested in this idea. This is precisely what I'm after in my current project (see the post here). I was thinking of using one of the widely available iPod clickwheel replacement components, but your method certainly sounds interesting. Have you got any code examples or advice?

Thanks!

Vytis