Custom Computer Volume Control Knob

We live in an amazing time in many ways. For a small fee, or being able to tolerate commercials, you can listen to an absolutely massive library of music on any number of streaming services. Through admittedly very little research, I chose to pay for Spotify in order to help me keep concentration while writing articles like this one. I’m quite pleased with the service, but there is one tiny issue, in that I need to shut off the music somehow when reviewing video-based content.

My keyboard had a start/pause button that works well with Spotify’s app, as well as volume controls, but I wanted something even better, an actual volume knob! To accomplish this, I chose the Trinket board from Adafruit as well as an encoder with an additional button on top. To my very pleasant surprise, electrically and code-wise, Adafruit they had almost exactly what I wanted outlined here. To get this working, “all” I had to do was made a body out of MDF, as well as a custom control knob and button, which turned out great!

I actually intended to modify Adafruit’s design with a series of resistors in order to accommodate multiple buttons, but because of the way the limited I/O on the Trinket is set up, this was easier said than done. You may notice that the end product does have an extra button (including the encoder’s button), however, both are wired into one input. Perhaps a feature for the next version?

Even with just one button, it’s been a fun device to use, and it feels great clicking through volume settings with the encoder and my custom knob. The button, usefully, has been programmed to start/pause instead of mute, making it useful to stop music while it let’s YouTube videos play. My only hesitation in being entirely pleased with this project, is that sometimes it’s slow to respond, or needs to be reset. However, it’s certainly possible that my very poor and unnecessarily complicated wiring job is a contributor to this issue!