Steel Reinforcement Toughens Cracked Vintage Knobs

Nothing can ruin a restoration project faster than broken knobs. Sure, that old “boat anchor” ham rig will work just fine with some modern knobs, but few and far between are the vintage…

A Tiny Knob Keeps You In Control

There are many forms of human interface device beyond the ubiquitous keyboard and mouse, but when it comes to fine-tuning a linear setting such as a volume control there’s nothing quite like …

Making A Guitar Go To Eleven, The Hard Way

At the end of the day, all it takes to make a guitar go to eleven is a new knob. Making the knob is another thing — that takes a shop full of machine tools, the expertise to use them, and a w…

Pimp The Potentiometer

Sometimes, a hack isn’t really about the technology but about the logistics. If we asked you to light up an LED using an Arduino, there’s a good chance you’d know exactly how to d…

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Foot Keyboard

[crispernaki]’s opening comments to this VCR head scroll wheel project lament that overall technical details aren’t “complex, ground-breaking, or even exciting.” Since when …

Hobnobbing With The Knob

The scroll wheel might be the best thing that happened to the computer mouse since, well, the computer mouse. But sometimes you want something a little more tangible. For example, with a software-d…

Make Your Own Pot And Encoder Knobs, Without Reinventing Them

Rotary potentiometers, switches, and encoders all share a basic design: adjustment is done via a shaft onto which a knob is attached, and knobs are sold separately. That doesn’t mean one knob…

Custom Printed Knobs In Just A Few Lines Of Code

While not everyone is necessarily onboard for the CAD-via-code principle behind OpenSCAD, there’s no denying the software lends itself particularly well to parametric designs. Using a few cho…

Odd Inputs And Peculiar Peripherals: RoenDi Smart Knob Thinks Outside The Box

When it comes to design decisions, we’re often advised to “think outside the box.” It’s generally good advice, if a bit abstract — it could really mean anything. But i…

An In-Depth Look At The Haptic Smart Knob

At Hackaday, we love those times when we get a chance to follow up on a project that we’ve already featured. Generally, it’s because the project has advanced in some significant way, wh…

OLED Display Kicks Knob Up Several Accurate Notches

As far as input devices go, the potentiometer is pretty straightforward: turn it left, turn it right, and you’ve pretty much seen all there is to see. For many applications that’s all y…

3D Printed Absolute Encoder Is Absolutely Wonderful

When you need to record the angle of something rotating, whether it’s a knob or a joint in a robotic arm, absolute rotary encoders are almost always the way to go. They’re cheap, they&#…