Hello, all. I am planning on building a DIY racing wheel for PC gaming, and this'll be my first real electronics project. Considering it'll be mostly momentary switches and a couple pots, I don't think it should be too challenging. But, I do have some questions about some components.
I see a lot of DIY wheels on the internet that use rotary encoders out of old printers to measure the rotation of the wheel, but since I'm not 100% sure any used or broken printer I can find for cheap would give me the parts I need, I'm also looking for alternatives. This particular encoder stands out to me:
Would this project be an appropriate application for this encoder? Or is this overkill, or underkill, or...?
It seems to be ok for your project. My team and I had to build something similar as a project. We used a cheap chinese rotary encoder (< 2$). It worked as expected, but the only issue we had, was with the rotary precision.
Concerning the microcontroller. I recommand using the Arduino Mega. With it, you will always have enough pins for extra components, like pedals, a head up display ... .
AKJ:
Concerning the microcontroller. I recommand using the Arduino Mega. With it, you will always have enough pins for extra components, like pedals, a head up display ... .
How did you go about the pc side of things? A Mega can't act as a HID.
I can't speak to whether or not the Mega can be interpreted as an HID, but I know a lot of people choose the Leonardo for this kind of thing. More than enough inputs, analog and otherwise. Here's a relevant video:
If you want HID functionality, you have to hack it. This can only be done with Unos that have the 16U2 ttl-to-usb converter (so excluding a lot of clones).
