#jogdial

[countymn]

victrola turntable baseplate (antiques) $25 | minnesota.allembru.com

[devastatingparadox]

Teardown and retrofit of a BMW e90 jog dial to USB using a Makey Makey board and wireless mouse brain

Here are some process pictures from the second jog-dial I converted to USB. This particular device is more complex than the previous jog-dial I worked on. Unlike the previous version, this one uses optical sensors for the up/down/left/right control, and the wheel itself has been fitted inside the knob and is quite similar to how a modern mouse scroll wheel operates. As usual I spent quite a bit of time following traces and trying to use the existing circuits. The problem is not knowing what any of the pin ins and outs are, or how the device interacts with the CAN bus, or how they (those devils in Bavaria) power it, etc. Some of this can be determined with an ohm meter and testing each pin. In the end I isolate the circuits I want to use and cut traces and add my own wiring to get the job done. 

I also used a wireless mouse to handle the dial output, converting this directly to mouse scrolling functionality. Everything else is connected to a Makey Makey board which already handles up/down/left/right and has pin inputs for keyboard strokes. I also used a SparkFun Redboard Arduino to do initial testing of my circuits.

[devastatingparadox]

Converting a BMW jog dial to USB

I was tasked with implementing a jog-dial for some automotive-based UI simulations here at Microsoft Connected Car. Basically, we want a way to control the UI with various modalities, one of which being a manufacturer's in-car jog-dial device. The jog-dial found in a BMW 3-series e90 is an ideal piece of hardware to add to the mix. After fiddling around with the can-bus gateway and trying to talk to this device through an Arduino board, I decided to just rewire the jog-dial outputs and use a USB mouse-wheel encoder. I'm using a Makey Makey board for keyboard input. A can-bus network is complete overkill for something that should be plug and play. 

These are some process pictures from this experiment. I obtained some nice material from a friend who makes guitars and gives me boxes of scrap guitar wood, so I put a little more effort into the enclosure. It's by no means perfect, but it will look good in the driving simulator. But the best part is the jog-dial is now plug-and-play and can be used with any computer.