Rotary Encoder (Not)

[HughBanton]

Yesterday I was looking at an old Arduino project, where I'd used a rotary encoder as input. I could well be mistaken but I don't think I've ever seen such a thing referred to in Flowstone?

And indeed why would you! (ALERT! - this project should be filed under 'Largely Pointless'). (But mostly harmless too ). Well, it's Jan 1st innit !

It's the 'incremental' type of rotary encoder which, if you've never played with these things, is the type that has 2 switches inside, which open & close phased 90deg from each other, from which in software you can determine the direction of travel.

So this morning, with nothing better to do, I set about simulating this in Ruby. I realised that there was little point in actually having a circular knob, since mouse control is going to be linear anyway. Click & drag. Here y'go ...

Rotary Encoder (not).fsm

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Obviously there are many other ways of achieving this, it's ultimately just a slider control, without any slider graphics! But the 2-bit thing is quite fun. I put the LEDs on so that you can see the switch action.

I'll get my coat ... 2021 can only get better!

H

[RJHollins]

Yeah ... but it is pretty cool

[trogluddite]

Using FlowStone links to draw the quadrature timing diagram is the icing on the cake!

And indeed why would you!

Bizarrely enough, I was paid to (kind of)!
Seriously: In my last job, I worked on the graphical interface for a microcontroller programming application (the name of which caused me endless confusion!) The program allows you to simulate the microcontroller code on a PC, complete with a virtual 3D model of the hardware you'll be connecting to its pins. It was part of my job to design the built-in modelled components - switches, buttons, motors, servos, LED displays, and... rotary encoders (complete with virtual quadrature outputs like yours for connection to virtual microcontroller inputs). Like a lot of that work, the algorithm behind it may well have been prototyped using my favourite interactive speed-coding system... FlowStone.

...little point in actually having a circular knob, since mouse control is going to be linear anyway. Click & drag.

Au contraire...

Round and Round.osm

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(...though the "little point" part may still apply - I'm not sure that anyone, myself included, has ever used this ancient cryptic [and buggy] device for anything useful! )

[deraudrl]

I realised that there was little point in actually having a circular knob, since mouse control is going to be linear anyway.

Then again, a mouse is just a 2D rotary encoder.

[Spogg]

Great fun guys!

Dare I suggest that the next step could be to make the sensitivity to the mouse dynamic?
Move it fast and the value changes faster, slow and you get finer control. Not really suitable for trog’s excellent endeavour though, but possibly nicer than shift-drag for finer control. Maybe…

[DaveyBoy]

Happy new year guys.

Here's one that I made a few years ago when I first started learning Ruby. If i were to redo this it would probably be totally different now . . but it works.

Credit has to go to Tulamide for his 'Circular mouse Check' tutorial which was the inspiration for this . . Thanks T.

Rotary Encoder Knob 2.fsm

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[trogluddite]

...but it works.

Much more reliably than my clunky old thing - nice! Definitely one of those cases where the Ruby makes it easier to fathom what's going on, I think - I gave up trying to reverse-engineer wherever the hell mine was flipping out!

[tulamide]

Credit has to go to Tulamide for his 'Circular mouse Check' tutorial which was the inspiration for this . . Thanks T.

You're welcome! I'm more than happy to see, that some of my examples really do inspire! Just for the record, here's the example: http://www.dsprobotics.com/support/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3837

[HughBanton]

Using FlowStone links to draw the quadrature timing diagram is the icing on the cake!

Next time I'll put candles on it

Anyway that's given me a great idea for April 1st. But shhh, whatever you do don't tell anyone ...

H

[HughBanton]

Great fun guys!

Dare I suggest that the next step could be to make the sensitivity to the mouse dynamic?
Move it fast and the value changes faster, slow and you get finer control. Not really suitable for trog’s excellent endeavour though, but possibly nicer than shift-drag for finer control. Maybe…

Yes, interesting idea. It needs to be born in mind that the '2-bit' rotary-encoder emulation I did here is essentially 'fake code' (is that a thing??) in that I've converted a regular counter into rotary-encoder-binary, and then converted that back again into a regular counter. See attached - the fake (blue) button & the regular (green) button methods, both do the same. I always said it was pointless!

Rotary Encoder (not)_2.fsm

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However I've made a couple of modifications to both, one makes them automatically more sensitive when the mouse is closest to the center. A sort-of improvement, but Spogg's velocity plan would be better . Might yield a useful incremental tool.

H