Hi all I am new here and am not sure if I am even in the right place. I recently began a htpc build and started with a custom case. I am at the point were I need to make a volume knob and have found little information on the web about doing this. A friend of mine who unfortunately lives across the country now told me to look into audrino(he mentioned very little besides that). I planned on getting a potentiometer to attach to an audrino board and from there to the usb of my PC to control the volume. Is this even possible? If so what would I need to get it to work properly. Maybe I am in the wrong place all together and there is an easier way to achieve my goal.Any help getting me over this hurdle in my build would be very helpfull.
HTPC is home theater pc?
Well, interfacing a potentiometer to the arduino and converting it to a numeric range is easy:
You can capture the analog value and either output it on the serial port or using the Ethernet shield, I guess. The tricky thing will be getting your PC to take that value and control the volume, for that you'll have to write code that runs on your computer, not the arduino.
There has to be an inexpensive commercial solution that will do this for you, if you just want it to work why not do that?
btw, welcome to the forums!
Two month ago I was in your position. I've documented my project here: www.hifiduino.blogspot.com I am not using a digital potentiometer because I'm controlling the volume in the DAC, but how to use Arduino should be applicable to your project. Hope you will find it useful. The project by linux-works is probably what you are looking for.
i am not able to use Ethernet Sheild so if any1 knows a way to do this using usb and the serial port it would be great