Side Project Experiment
Here’s a little side project I worked on recently - a USB controller with a rotary dial. It’s just a proof of concept and a very rough prototype as you can see!
In the past I’ve created many touchscreen applications but I wondered what interactions could be possible when a touch screen is not practical or is too expensive.
A keyboard and mouse seem a bit of an overkill and it’s also quite frustrating interacting with a smart TV using a remote control.
So I built this device and a little browser-based demo to show how it works.
The great thing about a rotary control is that you can be quite precise by moving it slowly while a quick twist can make the cursor cover a lot of ground.
It can be used in many situations when an input is required.
It can even be used as a game controller and some types of games are well suited to it.