The Knob is a stand-alone dial that can be programmed to do anything you want, and it’s available starting today for $49CAD!
A high-performance sensor
The sensor that’s inside the Ploopy Knob is the formidable AS5600, a magnetic sensor with 12-bits of position resolution. It’s capable of detecting rotational changes small than 1/10th of a degree. It’s so sensitive that it can detect a change as small as rotating the Knob just 0.043 millimeters, or 0.00169291 inches.
In other words, the Knob is very sensitive.
High-resolution scrolling
High-resolution scrolling is the smooth, pixel-by-pixel scrolling that allows for very fine control of viewports. It’s a topic that has interested quite a few people, as you can see from this discussion of the subject on the QMK Github.
Thanks to the fine work of Github contributor @eynsai (and others!), who contributed the PR that enabled high-resolution scroll stepping, devices such as the Knob now offer smooth, high-resolution scrolling.
No more discrete steps when doing scrolling; instead, viewports move continuously.
There is a slight caveat: currently, the high-resolution scrolling feature only works on Windows and Linux. The Knob will still function on MacOS and other operating systems, but will instead fall back to discrete steps. This is an unfortunate limitation by MacOS’s implementation of the USB spec.
Lots of possibilities
Out-of-the-box, the Knob ships with a vertical scrolling firmware, meaning that it’s a standalone scrolling device. Here are a few other common uses for the Knob:
- Horizontal scrolling. If you work with a lot of spreadsheets, you’ll probably understand the use for this.
- Creative work. Music production, image editing, video editing, and similar activities usually have lots of repetitive back-and-forth actions; a Knob suits this sort of function well.
- Media control. That might mean volume adjustment, playback (rewinding or fast-forwarding), or track selection.
Of course, the possibilities go beyond what’s listed here because the Knob’s firmware is customizable. If you have a use for the Knob that we haven’t thought of, you can easily implement it for yourself.
And… still open-source
The firmware is editable, as is the rest of the Knob’s design. The entire Knob is open-source, under the CERN OHL license for the hardware and GPL for the firmware.
We’ve also released full assembly documentation and everything you’d need to build a kit, repair it, make one yourself, or mod it.
Thanks to everyone in our community!
We’re excited to share this with you, and we hope that the Knob will serve this community well. We’re looking forward to seeing your builds and mods in the future!
Stay in touch with us!
