Guide Homebrew USB Knob

I wouldn't be too surprised if someone else thought of this ahead of me, I think its a pretty obvious solution. I did see on I-hacked recently was a guy who did basically the same thing to an old turntable, to use with some DJ software. Thats a pretty sweet idea.

 

sorry for my ignorance, but can we use this method for a normal PS/2 port?

FReD

 

yeah, if you can find software to make it do what you need. tahts the only limitation

im trying to take the rotory encoder out of a trackball and interface it with a PS2 keyboard and it uses the arrow up and arrow down keys. works pretty good so far/

 

I finally got around to doing this mod, I used a PS2 mouse, and it works great! Ill get a pic up soon!

 

great idea

 

Can somebody explain in detail how to do this with a PS/2 mouse (which I will plug into a PS/2-to-USB adapter) and a bunch of CD-rs superglued together? I appear to be too stupid to follow the instructions.

Thanks
Charlie

 

I just scored two of these vcr heads...going to try it later today. thanks for the great idea!

 

pretty cool (=
got a dead (already opened) hdd around so I'll probably do this on monday or tuesday (whenever I get a usb wheel mouse (; )

point of this post is, I think it is possible to develop an open source Powermate-like control application with a function (of .NET i think) called "RawInput".
There is example code here that makes it possible to use to mice together independently (unlike normal win XP, which lets them both control one cursor).

Now, if someone who is good at coding and willing to do this could write an app that lets you assign the scroll of one (user-selectable - or else it might take the knob for your real mouse :-S) mouse to volume or normal scroll and the two (or three) buttons to makros or shortcuts, that would be 1337 ^.^ (dont flame for using 1337, please xD - and not for using so many brackets either q-: )

Also thought about doing a wireless one....depends on the price of the mice (;


regards, and thanks for this Mod,
YoPoWa

PS: first post, so "Hi" [:

 

I'm very very new to modding, if you would be willing to explain how you did this with a PS/2 mouse, it would be greatly appreciated!

 

Great Mod

Great idea, thanks!

 

nice idea cool mod, might try it sometime, although the powermate looks better. id have to make it look pretty lol

 

what sizes have people made these?

I've got a couple of old VCRs and a cheap wireless optical mouse.

I've looked at the specs on griffintechnology.com and the mouse pcbs are bigger than it. Its 95mm long

 

Hi,

Just made my own wheel a while ago, thanks for this great idea I find it very usefull. Doing mainly illustration, I have assigned many functions to it with autohotkey (Brush size, etc).

What's great: nearly ALL of the numeric box entries in photoshop operate with mouse wheel.

Here is a pic to show how I have integrated it to a board who have a numpad and a graphic tablet embedded with a white board over it, (I like it better this way). I painted black a big washer that I hot-glued to cover the electronic plates of the knob.


Thanks !

Tarc

 

jpaturzo: under your name it still says "What's a Dremel?" (because you only have 16 posts ATM) but obviously you know something about modding. Awesome work. Thanks for the idea

YoPoWa: Welcome to the forums. I had the same thought about using the rest of the mouse buttons. The only difference is that I have an old Kensington mouse I might mod. Kensington has The best software I've tried (better than Razer, Logitech, & MS anyway)

Tarc, VERY nice implementation & welcome to the forums. Was the numpad part of the tablet to start or did you add that too? (looks awesome either way)

 

Hi Tyinsar,

I have integrated the numpad in the "frame" I built around the graphic tablet.
I remapped keystrokes on the numpad for most of the apps I use.

Being a lefty, all this stuff is placed on the right side of the board.

Tarc

 

It's even cooler then & for lefties (I'm one too)

 

How do you get the software side of things to work?
I would like to be able to get the mouse to control things like winamp / media player / volume controls in windows etc.

At the moment I have a 2 button generic ball mouse, no scroll wheel, which runs on the generic drivers.
I have a cheap optical mouse that doesn't last for very long, so I gave up using it.
It would last longer using it for this, not having to move the mouse pointer on the screen.
It has it's own driver from the manufacturer. The buttons can be assigned to other functions, but the scroll wheel cannot be assigned to other functions (only the scroll ammount can be changed)
They both currently control the mouse pointer in windows.

 

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There is many remapping software, I like Autohotkeys, it is rather simple and there is lot of documentation and active forums.

You can assign anything to the mousewheel (Keystrokes, scripts, etc..) also add different assignements while using modifiers (Ctrl, Shift, etc). You can even remap the mousewheel to act differently in specific applications.

Tarc

 

1) Welcome to the forums
2) USB (&PS/2) devices have an identifier in the hardware. This mod would be identified as whatever mouse was used and other drivers would probably not work with it.

Can't believe I hadn't seen that one yet. (Link) It looks fairly simple to use (once I figure it all out) but quite powerful. Thanks