[simpits-tech] Simple rotary encoder interface

[Peter Holt]

Guys,
	A gentleman called Kevin Darling has come up with a way of connecting rotary encoders to a hacked keyboard without any additional electronics.  He used the Panasonic encoders available from Digikey, part no. P10859-ND.  You can see his post here:

http://www.flightsimnetwork.com/dcforum/DCForumID12/255.html

When I read this post, I was amazed by how simple it was. My next thought was, I wonder if you could use the same approach with a Hagstrom KE72 keyboard encoder.

Since I have both the KE72 and some of the cheap Panasonic rotaries, I had to try and it works! 

Simply connect the centre pin of the rotary to ground on the KE72 and the other two pins to two inputs, input xx and input yy. Then load the KE72 with a configuration file containing these two lines: 
 
INXX:[SHIFT]
INYY:[a]
 
where the character assigned to input yy can be whatever you want to use.

Then when the encoder is rotated one way you will get the lower case of the character assigned to yy and the other, the upper case.  It is also possible to use [CTRL] instead of [SHIFT].

Hope this is useful,
Peter