Re: OK, I've got a detent encoder... What now?

Way overkill it seems, though pretty.
For this type of user interface application, there are plenty of affordable solutions if one can come up with a suitable control knob.
At the low end of the spectrum, you can get a mechanical rotary encoder with detents for about $3-$10. Digi-key, Arrow electronics, All Electronics etc. all supply such devices.
At the higher end of the range, you can go to optical encoders. U.S. Digital has a great selection of mid-range devices ($50-$100) which are optical and one can specify the number of count/rev - i.e. 100 if one so desires.
As for the electronics, in this day of $5 microcontrollers, it is absolutely trivial to make a circuit that can read the encoder quadrature output and output step and direction signals. Since we're all discussing home-brew solutions, this is more than within the realm of possibility for many.
There's been talk about scaling as well. Trivial also with the microcontroller.

Realistically, for an investment of about $20 in parts, one could build a very respectable little control knob pulser. Machine your own knob/handle and mount it in a little case, and you've got a direct axis pulser drive about the size of a pack of cards. If you go all out and use an optical encoder then you're still talking ~$100.

The next step is adding an interface from the knob to the software. Again, this can be relatively trivial, depending on the software support. But on the microcontroller end, again, it's just another few routines and you've got an interface to the host PC. That could be RS-232, parallel, whatever. None of this is terribly difficult. I've got a circuit in front of me that drives an LED multi-digit display, interfaces with an encoder knob for user interface and an optical encoder for positional feedback, drives 4 relays, one DC motor, reads a thermometer and generates video timing signals all via one $5 microcontroller and a handful of support chip. Total parts cost <$25. And what we're all talking about for the encoders and machine controllers is considerably simpler than this.

For the curious, this particular box is a telescope multi-controller, nothing to do with CAD-CAM. But the guts are no different.

And the code for all this? A few hundred BYTES of assembly, running at 50MIPS....

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@y..., Alan Marconett KM6VV <KM6VV@a...> wrote:
> Hi Brian,
>
> Ouch! Yeah, I thought they might be expensive! $375 USD probably isn't
> too much for a commercial machine, 'tho.
>
> They call 'em pulse generators, but I believe they are just encoders
> (sometimes called "pulse wheels"). I noticed that there are two rotary
> switches for rate selection, and axis to jog.
>
> Thanks for the URL!
>
> Humm, if I put on a bigger knob, mine would look a lot like that!
> Cheaper, 'tho!
>
> Alan KM6VV
>
>
> Brian Pitt wrote:
> >
> > they are probably fairly close to these guys in price
> > http://www.sumtak.com/productindex.html
> > the handwheels and pendents are down near the end of the page
> >
> > Brian
> >
> > On Tuesday 19 February 2002 16:50, you wrote:
> > > > Hi Bill,
> > > >
> > > > Nice stuff! At what price? (I didn't want to do the RFQ).
> > > >
> > > > Alan KM6VV
> > >
> > > Alan