Who understands what's going on here & wants to build this (for pay)? LED Rotary Rings

Laygo I found these continuous pots on ebay which are quite cheap considering they are usually over $20 a piece. If they work at a mechanical level then they would be a better option than encoders, more intuitive. I'd have to get an A2D chip with enough inputs but that's easy enough. Thoughts?
 
... I struggled with the same and found it much too cumbersome to drill all the holes for the LED rings. So, I now use NeoPixels that simply change the colour according to the set level (blue = 0, going over green and yellow to red). I find it intuitive and precise enough for musical applications / situations. Attached, you can see an old TC Electronic controller case in which I built a floorboard for Ace FX. The upper knobs are rotary encoders and the colour of the ring indicates the value (approx. 15 in "loop1"; 100 in "loop2"; 40 in "loop 3" and 0 under "edit" (of course, the knobs have other functions now, in this case e.g. Gain, Bass, Mids, Highs).

I have been using this thing for a couple off years now and it works fine for me.

Just my thoughts...

IMG_4969.jpg
 
fret said:
Laygo I found these continuous pots on ebay which are quite cheap considering they are usually over $20 a piece. If they work at a mechanical level then they would be a better option than encoders, more intuitive. I'd have to get an A2D chip with enough inputs but that's easy enough. Thoughts?
Click to expand...
That is out of my realm of understanding! ;) No clue what works, what doesn't.
 
Regarding rotary pots (servo pots):


Again, that's just my 2 cents, but I believe the beauty of the rotary encoders is their interaction with presets: Whilst the pots (regardless of whether they are servo pots / continuous pots or the good-old standard pots we know from tube amps) are intuitive to dial in, their positions will be completely off once you change your preset. There were solutions with motorised pots (e.g. by Yamaha, the DG - 1000 rack preamp), but this concept is slow and even more expensive (motorised pots, motor drivers etc).

There are some products that simply ignore this fact (like e.g. the Atomic Amps Amplifire). I had one of these and found it a kind of one-way street: Good to dial in from scratch, but completely counterintuitive when changing presets.

So, bottomline: I don't think that servo pots will solve the "issue"; the rotary encoders (if they are precise enough) in my view are the right way to go.

There is one Chinese supplier who sells (not so beautiful) LED indicators, you can find them on the bay searching for "Annular LED-Ring-Display" to the general public.

And if you google "sea round led indicator", you can find a sweet solution that looks really good.

Sadly, I have not found an accessible source for these :-(

Cheers-
S
 
SebastianH said:
Again, that's just my 2 cents, but I believe the beauty of the rotary encoders is their interaction with presets: Whilst the pots (regardless of whether they are servo pots / continuous pots or the good-old standard pots we know from tube amps) are intuitive to dial in, their positions will be completely off once you change your preset. There were solutions with motorised pots (e.g. by Yamaha, the DG - 1000 rack preamp), but this concept is slow and even more expensive (motorised pots, motor drivers etc).
Click to expand...

The way I implemented it in my foot controller is to process the input from the servo pot into deltas. Those deltas apply to the configured setting in the current preset. At no time is the absolute value of the pot used directly. So it literally IS an encoder in function. Even though under the hood it's not that simple. When the preset changes the "value" doesn't jump to the absolute value when you move the pot.
 
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