Author Topic: Griffin PowerMate clone (Read 6212 times)

Bluebie · « **on:** November 22, 2012, 10:51:48 pm »

The Griffin PowerMate is this rather nifty little metal knob with a usb plug. It has an LED whose brightness can be controlled, and it reports your rotation as you turn the knob or when you press it in as a button. Griffin has some neat desktop software to talk to the device and connect it up to all sorts of things.

Neater still? It's a regular low speed USB HID device - exactly the sort of device the digispark is. It'd be pretty easy to make a PowerMate clone as a digispark shield, perhaps with an iPod-like PCB touch wheel in place of a knob. It'd only need a few resistors, a PCB, the usual header pins, and perhaps an LED.

digistump · « **Reply #1 on:** December 10, 2012, 10:37:46 pm »

I ordered up a really nice aluminum knob and some rotary encoders with click to give this a shot.

digistump · « **Reply #2 on:** December 10, 2012, 10:38:24 pm »

I\'m thinking a semi translucent acrylic base with the LED inside - possibly a red or white LED.

Bluebie · « **Reply #3 on:** December 11, 2012, 04:27:56 pm »

Sounds cool! I look forward to seeing your experiments ^_^

r4v5 · « **Reply #4 on:** January 03, 2013, 09:08:02 am »

Seems quite doable with a standard gray-code rotary encoder plus pushbutton.
Two pins for USB, two pins for the two legs of the encoder, pin for pushbutton, and a leftover one for an LED.

Bluebie · « **Reply #5 on:** January 03, 2013, 02:32:32 pm »

Yep yep! A nice variant of this I think would be a version which just uses digikeyboard to enter in volume up and volume down keystrokes with each click of one of the clicky encoders, and maybe play-pause or mute for button click in