My Rotary Encoder Adventure

True Confessions - I'm a Tight-Wad

It seems that a central theme to all of my electronics projects is my desire to not spend any money. I'm not exactly well-off but, still, I do take cost-cutting to a ridiculous extreme.

My main source of through-hole components is "recycling" from other people's discarded junk. I draw amazing benefits from other people's anti-social behaviour. Others complain about fly-tipping but, if it's consumer electronics they're disposing of, I see it as a fantastic bounty of free components.

Turning "Rotary Encoders" Into an Expletive

Anyway, my Electribe MX developed a fault years ago, that the "main" rotary encoder started skipping steps and running in the wrong direction and just generally being a pain.

I think this is a common fault... there's a great deal of "user-interface stuff" under that rotary encoder and there's a couple of very long lists of options that take a lot of scrolling through. AND it's a mechanical encoder not an optical one. There do seem to be a lot of people online complaining about the same issue as I've got.

And the particular rotary encoder that Korg chose to use way back when if now kinda rare. I've been searching for something similar on E. Bay for a long time now.

Small Sellers on E. Bay and Negative-Feedback-Phobia

I found a seller on E. Bay who has some vaguely similar rotary encoders at my sort of price and my inner Mr. Scrooge said that they weren't so expensive and that maybe they would do the trick.

My parcel arrived and the seller had accidentally sent me some rather peculiar potentiometers instead.

And, speaking as a very small E. Bay seller myself, I could really see where this seller was coming from. If you're the sort of small-scale seller that E. Bay was supposedly created for, you see any dropping of your positive feedback score below 100% as the kiss-of-death.

Anyway, the seller immediately refunded me AND promised to send me the correct encoders as soon as humanly possible which he duly did.

But, I was trying to make do, and I couldn't really make these encoders fit in the Electribe in any sensible way.

Escape From Brexit Island

Back before the political events of 2020, I'd buy a few things every now and again from the rest of Europe or occasionally from further afield. Among other things, you can't be involved in this hobby without occasionally falling for the charms of PCB-Way or JLPCB.

A few years ago, I ordered a bunch of PCBs for a surface-mount microcontroller project I was playing around with. And the order progressed quite smoothly... well quite smoothly until the newly "independent" UK Customs and Excise decided to have their fun with me. Apparently I had to pay something like 3 times the amount that I paid JLPCB to allow my PCBs out of quarantine.

With this in mind, you can imagine that I was a little reticent when I found that a supplier in Germany had exactly the encoders I was looking for available.

As this issue with my Electribe has been dragging on for so long now, I eventually bit the bullet and clicked on the shopping cart icons.

And the correct rotary encoders arrived in the post a week later, with no sign of the dreaded E. mail from Customs and Excise. Hoorah!

But The Story Wouldn't Be Worth Telling Without a Dose of Irony

Just a couple of days later, I was out for a walk with my girlfriend. And, there, discarded in an alleyway was a bag-for-life (the fly-tippers best friend) with a rather tasty looking sound-system in it. My immediate reaction would be to pick it up and scuttle off back home with it. But, mindful of my girlfriend's probable exclamations of "Oh Good God, What do you want that rubbish for?!", I just made a not of it and came back for it later.

Sitting in my office this weekend, I was stripping down my new booty... plenty of nice odds and ends inside. And there it was, staring me in the face. You know those "rather rare" rotary encoders that I've been going on and on about... Well, there it is right next to the VFD... the very thing I've been trying to get hold of... available from "my regular components supplier" at my favourite price!

... well, I suppose another spare will come in handy!