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The Joypad That Became A Rotary Controller
jaromil writes "Speaking of human/computer interface, so simple, so neat, a usb knob to switch among desktops can give us quite some feeling about operating a machine... how about such controls around the monitor?" The knob in this case is switching between different effects possible with EffecTV. This make me wonder what creative uses people are putting Griffin's PowerMate to.
knob...can give us quite some feeling...
I think I already have one of those.
"how about such controls around the monitor?"
As any mouse user can tell you, taking your hands off your keyboard is damaging to your productivity.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Wow! Knobs are useful? I never would have thought..(/sarcasm)
I only have 16 knobs attached to my PC via USB/Midi.
If you think about it: weirdly, the iPod is a rotary controller that became a joypad. The first iPods had the mechanical scroll wheel and then they moved to the touch wheel....but the latest generation also rocks left, right, up and down. I personally love these kind of interfaces. Scroll wheels on mice are similar, as are just plain old dials, but they requre you to lift up your finger/hand repeatedly to scroll far enough in either direction. The iPod doesn't. What if that kind of interface was more widespread?
Take off every sig. For great justice.
/me fails to understand what the great benefit of knobs is. there is always an almost-as-easy (and perhaps easier) way to do things, so why waste your money?
My sig would have been a lot cooler if
I think Solitare is on channel 4...
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
We went from knobs that were attatched to our televisions to buttons that evolved by having remotes and such.
So today I look at this and I see, the knob but for computers of today and I ask myself, is this proof that old but simple technology is still useful today even though we evolved and changed the standard from knobs to buttons/touchpads/screens
Having another button or a knob on the kayboard might be a good idea, but we're years off since no mainstream operating system supports multiple desktops at this time. Apple's close with Expose, but it's still a far cry from the real thing.
BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.
... knob homie is one of those smart engineering folk.
he should extend this so it works with other appliances, like:
http://www.tv-b-gone.com/
i want to turn off people, animals, blenders, radios, airplanes, trains... oh, the list goes on.
Virtual Desktop Manager from microsoft
Manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar with this PowerToy.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/pow ertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Also, is it possible to actually use this thing without steadying it with your other hand? I really would not want to stick it to the desk. Wouldn't the whole thing turn when you tried to twiddle the dial?
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
How about we simply add another scroll wheel to the mouse? Does anyone know of any experiments/products like this? Added productivity without needing another couple limbs (although I could sure as hell use another pair)
Call me old-fashioned but I find pressing Alt-number or Alt-arrow more than adequate.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
The fact that the author used a USB game pad as the electronic base of his device brings up an issue which increasingly plagues electronics hobbyists... Manufacturers are beginning to see many useful protocols (such as RS232) as obsolete and completely remove support for them from their products. While the average American consumer, who uses arbitrary metrics and units-of-measurement-become-buzzwords (megapixels... gigahertz... etc.) to judge the worth of a device, would not care much about seeing those ugly trapezoidal plugs disappear from the back of their computers, it presents a huge problem for us hobbyists who rely on good-old '232 and similar "old" interfaces for easy communication with a computer. Anyone who's ever written (or tried to write) USB interface code knows that's Hell to work with. Fortunately, though, there are solutions... including handy interface chips which handle all the nasty USB work and provide a simple asynchronous serial interface on the project end. However, I still will never buy a motherboard without RS232!
I'd like to have a good direct volume control on my PC. The PowerMate is rather pricy at 40 dollars. Is it any good? Would i be receiving value for my money? Is it really solid?
IAAL
Ignor? Sounds Russian.
I only have 16 knobs attached to my PC via USB/Midi.
16 knobs and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt... st. peter don't you call me cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the company store.
Check out the Griffin Powermate ("the coolest volume knob your computer has ever seen")
I have one, and I must concur - it is pretty damn cool.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Look at Girder!!!
http://www.promixis.com/products.php
OK, it is not free but it is the best one and so small in terms of resources and memory. Home Page.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
And the musicians are having the most fun kludging stuff together to make some phat sounds out of the common peripherals they already own. I have been hooking up a Sidewinder Force Feedback steering wheel to the x-y controller in FL Studio scratching it like it was a vinyl turntable. and also use the gas/brake pedals for stomp-box effects and a wah controller for the guitar...Easy shit. Also, try using a Wacom tablet as a tool similar to what a KORG KAOSS Pad can do. I am amazed that it's taken the rest of the geek community is just starting to catch on. Oh well, kudos for those who make the most of it.
Move along, nothing to see here.
My monitor goes all the way to 11!
Er, 12 actually.
How about pan-t-hose. Does that sound like a troll's username?
Very cool hack. I wonder if Griffin would consider starting building keyboards with integrated knobs, alongside or in place of numeric keypads?
I also wonder if there's any interest in mapping, say, a row of toggles to stuff like this. Literally switch from desktop 01 to 11. This kind of goes to the whole 'antiquing' fad that has folks building mini-itx gramophone players/iceboxes/televisions, fitting bakelite handsets to cellphones, etc..
Another interesting hack would be to have two knobs and run the pointer like an etch-a-sketch. It'd be ten out of ten for style but minus several million for good thinking..
We went from knobs that were attatched to our televisions to buttons that evolved by having remotes and such.
Part of the reason that buttons on TVs became attractive is because it reduced the overall foot print of the TV. I have one 19 inch TV circa mid 80s that measures 25inches across, and one 27 inch tv that measures 24 inches cross, the key diffrence is the 19 inch has the old style turnknob and the 27 inch has but a handfull of buttons. More picture but smaller footprint, it's a good tradeoff, so long as you don't loose the remote control.
But who in this day and age would want to flip through the 100+ channels available on cable TV? Those who remember tuning in UHF might remember this noice *CLICK* *CLICK* *CLICK* *CLICK* *CLICK*! This would be far too impractical, but at the same time round volume controls are back in fashion. Unlike buttons they allow us to choose how fast we turn the knob, and we can remember there and abouts how far to turn to get at the right loudness level. I don't consider this to be de-evolution at all because the controls are often digital rather than an old style pot the likes of which gets cloged up with dust and dirt and becomes scratchy over time, but rather an evolution of what works and bringing to forth to the next level. Besides it's a hell of alot easier to spot the volume control if it's a knob rather than buttons.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Wow, I wonder how much Taco gets for sales of this device.
Tyler: You don't know where ive been, Lou. YOU DONT KNOW WHERE IVE BEEN!!
Makes a USB controller card for a very reasonable price. They even make add on boards to easily control motors and such. You should check them out. I talked to the owner of the company and he was very helpful in answering questions about the board, and helping me plan the design of my computer controlled camera mount.
But it goes to 11! 11 is better!
If your productivity is text oriented, then yes, taking your hands off of the keyboard is damaging to productivity. If it is graphic oriented, then a mouse, or graphic tablet is better. What if your productivity is music oriented? You're better off with a piano keyboard than a typewriter keyboard. In short, matching the interface to the task will always give you better productivity.
Having said all that, a horizontal thumbwheel mounted on the edge of the keyboard, underneath the spacebar allowing me to scroll sideways from desktop to desktop would be cool.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
The Contour ShuttlePro is nicer. My stepdad, a retired cinematographer and photographer, is into video editing and uses one on his PC. All the buttons and the wheel itself are programmable and so forth. Definitely worth the ~$100US price tag IMHO, if you're constantly editing video. It should be quite nice for gaming as well, though I haven't tried it for that yet.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
"please refrain from tasting the knob" -Ralph Wiggum
Knob creek
www.machinegunshoot.com
now thats some tactile feedback
Try in your mac's putting "the gimp" on Winkey+menukey+Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Z. Scares the s**t outta the newbies arround my linux box.
How about a mouse with a scroll-trackball on top? I'd buy one... it would be very helpful for image editing on the pixel level.
WTF you say, I have an Philips Aurilium sound card, which it seems is both a soundcard and a keyboard (the knob on it sends a Vol+/- keypress to the computer that then alters the volume), A USB keyboard and a keyboard on my laptop. X11 is already not liking this fact (and the whole soundcard seems to stop working when the keyboard in the soundcard doesn't get picked up correctly). Does anyone else have problems like this?
Going back on topic, is this thing another god damn keyboard! and if so how on earth are you supposed to configure X11 for this insane setup.
Shit I can't help thinking with such wierdness a static text based configuration file is good enough.
Oh man, that would be perfect for playing Pong.
here is the use i found for my powermate
. zip
made a max/msp patch to make it send midi CC data
http://www.johnmccaig.com/downloads/patches/iknob
.cig
The most interesting use I have seen is in the shimming of magnets. Powerful electromagnets based around a fixed core require a level of shimming to make minute adjustments to the field in the name of homogeneity. These are often done through a control PC interface such as via these USB knobs.
Jon.
If you think about it, the major innovations in computer interfacing hardware have pretty much been the keyboard, the mouse, and the mouse wheel.. Not too much to it. I can't help but wonder if there's space for more to come along.
I think the iPod's new touch wheel that also tilts around is pretty snazzy. Imagine if they put one of those suckers on your laptop right next to the regular touch pad. "Turn the wheel" to scroll around, do so while pushing down on the right side to switch applications, press up or down on it to scroll a page at a time... Maybe I'm dreaming again, but I think it's a pretty versatile control system that really isn't used to its full potential.
I agree, using a scroll wheel to switch desktops just doesn't sound like the tool is fit for the job. A virtual desktop is not a sort of thing that you have to "dial in". It's not a matter of precision, you're either on desktop 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.. The tactile sensation that knobs offer goes quite well with tuning things that require a matter of precision. Think microscope, slr camera, guitar string. This need for precision is why outboard midi controllers have been around for so long, and why people like Roland brought out things like the JP 8000 years ago. The technology is there where the need is, and the Power-Mate definitely fills that need in a lot of instances. I just don't think switching desktops is one of those instances.
> Channel 6 Live Streaming
Christ, is that a volcano? Holy shit! Mount St. Helens erupted!!
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In the field I work in (synthesizers), the perceptive nature of our customers (musicians) when relating to a user interface is indeed a tricky and wonderful force to behold. Rotary knobs, and the general 'feel' of a system as a result of simple interface kinetics, is fairly well-established in this field.
I've always viewed the standard computer interface (keyboard/mouse) as being curiously unburdened by progress and change; you cannot say the same for the synth business, where there is no one standard for how you ought to use knobs.
I've got two PowerMates, both on each side of an Apple extended keyboard, they are without doubt among the most precious peripheral I have on my desk. I've also got a couple of faderfox boxes, an LV1 and an LX1, which are also awesome primary/secondary interfaces, as well offering endless rotaries for various nefarious uses..
The attempt by Microsoft to commodotize their 'peripheral assets' (MS Natural keyboard) while providing pitiful support (beyond HID) for application authors, and the tendency of other interface mfr's to vector off into 'cool but ultimately useless plastic hack' (anyone remember the Cyberman?) is fairly common. Once again, its all about the operating system.
But you know, if you want to know more about endless uses for rotary knobs, look no further than the audio/synth/pro-media tool markets. Especially of the 80's and 90's
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
.. (as I have already mentioned elsewhere) .. and I think that maybe your problem is you need to buy another one.
..
The thing is, I don't really agree with you on the assumption that everyone will wind up in the same boat as you.
Sure, the cables are short: but not if they're plugged into your USB keyboard. I have an Apple extended keyboard (fantastic) and it serves as a hub- I have a black and silver PowerMate plugged into each side, and the short cable length, in this situation, is a plus, not a negative.
I've set up my PM's for every major app I use, and the driver defaults already for a lot of 'regular' apps, such as my web browser. Its quite fun to sit back in my chair, thumbmates in hand, one to scroll the window, the other to select hyperlinks in a web page. After 20 seconds of use, its now the most 'natural-feeling' way of surfing the web for me; I find the mouse to be utterly awkward in comparison. ick!
Great for movies and audio scrubbing too! Way more fun to skip frames with a big fat wheely knob than try to get the mouse to do anything accurate
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
PVR's are in heavy need of a nice rotary controller. A single large knob that you can modify the volume and time shifting controls with. With a knob you can get a nice feel for how far ahead back or ahead you want to go without flooding the IR.
I've never heard about this JP before, which is rather understandable considering how old it is.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Here you are - 4-d Optical Mouse
The Griffin is fine but pretty limited. Turn right, turn left, click right, click left, click, long click. All the click commands tend to stick together so it's mainly useful on only the one axis.
I suggest using a gamepad and Joystick 2 Mouse 3.
I'm using a PS2 controller now, which gives me two analog sticks (four axes) and 16 or however many buttons. Moreover Joystick 2 Mouse supports a shift key system, so 15 buttons can be set to have two commands.
There's essentially nothing in the UI I can't control with it. I have it to the side of my keyboard and can use it without picking it up.
What's *really* great is that I have it mapped to control things like brush opacity in Corel Painter and take care of all the major shortcuts. With my Intuos 2 in one hand and the left half of the PS2 pad in my other, I don't need to touch the keyboard at all when painting. It reminds me of Data playing that strategy game with the cups on his fingers.
Wacom recently clued in to the importance of extra controls, but their Intuos 3 fingertrack system is currently more limited than the gamepad approach. Once the image software supports the tracks in a more creative way that may change.
PS2 controller for $20, adapter for $10, Joystick 2 Mouse 3 is free... $30. Most people already have a gamepad of some sort, too.
Some time ago I used the powermate in a wearable computing project using tones and computer-synthesised voice as feedback.
As any mouse user can tell you, taking your hands off your keyboard is damaging to your productivity.
And blinding quoting rules out of the text book, without understanding why they are correct is harmfull to interface design.
This is for use with video effect software! How much typing do you think they will be doing? In fact, it appears that this is a kiosk set-up, and this simple knob replaces the keyboard altogether. This is a much cleaner and intuitive interface for this application than using a full keyboard, will decrease the amount of time learning the system, and if anything will improve productivity.
Phidgets (http://www.phidgets.com/) is something that has recently become extremely cheap and accessible to software guys like me who HATE hardware. Phidgets make it really easy to build physical user interfaces (think nobs, switches, pressure sensors, etc.) without needing to do any hardware stuff yourself.
y /index.html).
They are extremely easy to use, as you can see by these undergrad projects (http://grouplab.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/phidgets/galler
Full disclosure: I am a member of the lab from which this stuff was developed.
Here's how I use my Powermate:
Come on, it's goatse, but it IS rather funny in this context. At least for me. The mods had higher standard, I suppose... ;)
I have a Logitech Cordless Desktop MX connected to my linux box, and using Hotkeys I can easily set the volume with the spinning disc in the top center of the keyboard. This is very useful since I often watch movies with large volume ranges and I can very quickly and very precisely adjust the loudness that way. I especially like the fact that the disc doesn't have a fixed "start" and "end" position but rather spins freely, making it similar to the iPod scroll wheel.
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
I think the market has missed the point with the Powermate. It is sold primarily as a volume control, but I've found that leaving it on the left side of the keyboard, with the left-right knob movement bound to arrow up/down makes for a more comfortable and ergonomic work environment. When scrolling through long webpages like slashdot, I can relax my (right) mouse hand and let my left hand use the knob to scroll up and down. It feels more natural than having two mice, as one can operate a knob just fine with no warmup (try left-handing a mouse immediately after using your right - it's hard for most). With the knob, switching back and forth between left and right hand scrolling is smooth and easy, no fumbling around. It works just fine in virtually every application without any special settings. Try scrolling with the Powermate, you'll like it!
So, here's my problem - I can't do this in Linux! There is a linux driver for the Powermate, but apparently it's only preconfigured use is as a volume control for XMMS, for which I could care less. If anyone has figured out how to bind the Powermate knob to keystrokes in Linux, please post some clues! I presume it would take a 2.4.x kernel (which has the Powermate driver built-in) and some X Windows config stuff to do the binding. Thanks!
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