All of Your Volume Are Belong to Maxmix

When working with multiple programs on your computer, one application’s volume setting may be too high for others. This can be annoying, and even time consuming, considering you have to figure out which menu to open and which slider to adjust, before having to do it yet again when the situation changes. As an alternative, the Maxmix by Ruben Henares lets you change the volume of Discord, Spotify, or whatever else with the turn of a knob.

The sleek device is based on an Arduino Nano and interfaces via software running on a Windows 10 PC. Different applications are selected by scrolling through options with the encoder, displayed on a tiny 128x32 OLED. When the encoder button is pressed, it brings up a screen which shows a volume bar and numerical display, letting you adjust things as you see fit.

It’s a fun build, but perhaps the best part about it is that you can recreate it for around $25, with 3D-printed parts and off-the-shelf components. Even assembly isn’t prohibitive, as Henares' documentation claims that you can put it together in 25 minutes. There's also an option to add an LED ring under the knob, producing a nice blue glow in the demo video below.

Of course, this isn’t the only volume control input we’ve featured here. I made this gadget last year (or really over the last few years) that also lets you skip songs and has ‘lock key' indication. On the other hand, it took me much longer than 25 minutes to make, and doesn’t have the ability to control apps individually!