Would be great if it could do other things, like be a volume knob, or do media play/pause, given that scrolling and mouse button press seem like things you already have a mouse to do?
Yippy! I feel like I'm 15 years younger
>Of course, modern controllers exist that offer many more literal bells and whistles...
Anyone have a favorite 'modern controller' for those of us who no longer have a PowerMate?
Not commercial, but “Engineer Bo” on YouTube has an interesting series about building his own very professional looking scroll knob:
LilyGo/TTGo also has some interesting knobs with some unusual features features (force feedback or LCD touchscreen on top of the knob, depending on model) but again I don't have firsthand experience and these might take some DIY
There was a poster on HN a while ago that recommended¹ the Drok USB volume knob because it can be reconfigured to send keystrokes or mouse actions. Just Google for "configure drok usb volume control knob" for instructions. I reconfigured mine to send mouse scroll events for scrolling through documents.
Some are calling it the most obvious trend of all computing. And that was before the agentic age super put its finger on the cosmic scales of justice+hacking.
some elgato stream deck models have knobs. 3Dconnexion also still around
I love this. PowerMate was the ultimate fidget tool when not scrolling, editing, etc.
I have one of these all I need to do is find it.
Literally thinking the same thing. I have one somewhere... Haven't seen it in twenty years
I have one of these and now all I need to do is find a reason to use the Mac.
Damn I always wanted to one of these! So cool
I check eBay from time to time, they are usually very expensive.
I have one of those, but never used it too much—if the button got pressed while my Mac was asleep, it immediately woke up and kernel panicked. I don’t know if there was something odd about my machine or my particular PowerMate or what?
Lol I wrote a new driver for the bluetooth one a few months ago.
Curse you! Now I have to go clean out the attic to find mine.
Would be great if it could do other things, like be a volume knob, or do media play/pause, given that scrolling and mouse button press seem like things you already have a mouse to do?
Yippy! I feel like I'm 15 years younger
>Of course, modern controllers exist that offer many more literal bells and whistles...
Anyone have a favorite 'modern controller' for those of us who no longer have a PowerMate?
Not commercial, but “Engineer Bo” on YouTube has an interesting series about building his own very professional looking scroll knob:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYK5tmZIBWtHYt4w8Y6P6ba-I...
I don't have one, but Ploopy's knob is intriguing (https://ploopy.co/knob/).
LilyGo/TTGo also has some interesting knobs with some unusual features features (force feedback or LCD touchscreen on top of the knob, depending on model) but again I don't have firsthand experience and these might take some DIY
There was a poster on HN a while ago that recommended¹ the Drok USB volume knob because it can be reconfigured to send keystrokes or mouse actions. Just Google for "configure drok usb volume control knob" for instructions. I reconfigured mine to send mouse scroll events for scrolling through documents.
¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31702940
Surface Dial is a good hardware target.
Microsoft Surface Dial is nice. You'll also need to write a driver...
As usual there is very very very good Linux support for a device (this device, the MS Surface Dial), better than anywhere else. https://github.com/daniel5151/surface-dial-linux
Some are calling it the most obvious trend of all computing. And that was before the agentic age super put its finger on the cosmic scales of justice+hacking.
some elgato stream deck models have knobs. 3Dconnexion also still around
I love this. PowerMate was the ultimate fidget tool when not scrolling, editing, etc.
I have one of these all I need to do is find it.
Literally thinking the same thing. I have one somewhere... Haven't seen it in twenty years
I have one of these and now all I need to do is find a reason to use the Mac.
Damn I always wanted to one of these! So cool
I check eBay from time to time, they are usually very expensive.
I have one of those, but never used it too much—if the button got pressed while my Mac was asleep, it immediately woke up and kernel panicked. I don’t know if there was something odd about my machine or my particular PowerMate or what?
Lol I wrote a new driver for the bluetooth one a few months ago.
Curse you! Now I have to go clean out the attic to find mine.