Slashdot Mirror
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.
"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."
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.
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 wonder if Griffin would consider starting building keyboards with integrated knobs, alongside or in place of numeric keypads?
Y'know what'd be better - Apple putting the (presumably patented, since we haven't seen it on anyone else's hardware) iPod scroll wheel into a keyboard or even on a standalone USB panel. As several have said, it's more usable than anything else because you can scroll long lists without repeatedly removing your finger. Physically grasping and moving a Griffin Powermate involves reconfiguring the way you're moving your hands and they can't be continuously spun as easily as the iPod wheel.
The Apple mouse continues to live without a scroll wheel though, which is, IMO, a much needed addition (FYI, I was under the opinion that moving from the 5 buttons of my Razer Boomslang to the 1 button Apple mouse would never work, and I've got them both hooked in now - I never use the Razer and the only bit I miss is the scrollwheel. All the other functions can be achieved more quickly with one hand hitting hotkeys on the keyboard as I click). I really miss a useful scrolling tool on my mac, and a nice little touchwheel on the edge of the keyboard would be quick, simple and fluid to use while I'm typing.