software creative
The new circuit boards for the break-out board I designed arrived. The assembled version checks out just fine with the interrupts enabled using the PJRC Encoder library.
I’ve struggled finding the perfect tuning knob to use this encoder on my [ongoing] M1 Transceiver build. Eventually, I decided the best thing to do would be to buy another Elecraft K3 tuner knob directly. Bottom picture shows it perfectly.
I purchased a Bourns ENA1J serial rotary optical encoder. This control has a nicely weighted shaft that uses ball bearings. It is rated for >= 10 million rotations. The ENA1J outputs beautiful square signals (unlike mechanical rotary encoders). I think I paid USD$35 for this premium part. You will find optical rotary encoders on high end radios like the Elecraft K3 and professional mixer boards.
I designed a pcb that takes the quadrature output of the ENA1J into INT0 and INT1 inputs of the ATMEGA328P mcu. A pin header gives access to the I2C bus that allows this to be used as a satellite peripheral.