[Saturday: 6 miles; today 3.4 miles]
I had been playing with the Si5351A board from NT7S in conjunction with an Arduino Nano, LCD and surplus optical encoder which was given to me long ago by K0OJ from out of an Yaesu HF radio.
I had been thinking more about the optical encoder and did some googling and found this magnetic encoder at the Mad Scientist Hut which included a little circuit break-out board with the magic chip and a magnet, all for about the same cost as a cheap optical encoder. So I ordered that and it came the other day.
In my junk box I happen to have a weighted knob/flywheel from an old stereo receiver. I don’t remember which brand or model, probably something from the 70’s. It did have a dial string arrangement. Well, I dug that thing out and used a bit of bathtub caulk to mount the magnet on the end just right. And I used some scrap aluminum to build a bit of a test jig for the magic chip. You have to have the chip within a few mm of the magnet. The rest wires up just like an optical encoder. I didn’t even change my Arduino code.
I like the feel of the heavy flywheel knob. Pretty smooth. With this setup I get just over 10 kHz per knob rotation.
