Vector ring indicators for Volume, tone, etc..

[jkokura]

I think 4 is too few, but I don't think that's the practical way to do it. You could if you were using a switch of some sort, but at that point, you may as well go to a digital solution anyway.

Jacob

[RobA]

Dear engineers:
It could
Be possible to create a layout where , lets say, 4 small leds would light depending on the resistanc level of the pots?

You want the four LED's for one pot or four LED's for four pots with the brightness of the LED reflecting the pot value?

Either way it's going to depend on what you want to use the pot for. If you are using the pots to control parameters on an MCU, then it's fairly easy. If you are using them as say a gain pot in an analog circuit, it's going to get complicated and most likely not worth the trouble.

[Gledison]

Dear engineers:
It could
Be possible to create a layout where , lets say, 4 small leds would light depending on the resistanc level of the pots?

You want the four LED's for one pot or four LED's for four pots with the brightness of the LED reflecting the pot value?

Either way it's going to depend on what you want to use the pot for. If you are using the pots to control parameters on an MCU, then it's fairly easy. If you are using them as say a gain pot in an analog circuit, it's going to get complicated and most likely not worth the trouble.

hey RobA , actually I was thinking about a led indicator for the volume or gain. 4 or more leds around the knobs... I don't now...just thinking about something different...
cheers

[slimtriggers]

Could something like this be adapted to do what you're looking for?  Maybe a dual gang pot where one gang controls volume or whatever, the other gang controls voltage to the LED circuit?

Kinda big, though.



http://www.element14.com/community/thread/4644

[RobA]

The idea of using a dual pot is probably going to be the best approach then. Doing it with that LM3914 would be one fairly straight forward way to do it. But that is a pretty big IC. There are probably other LED drivers that can do similar things.

But, if all you are looking for is 4 LED's, then you could get that from a simple little program and an ATTiny13. If you want a few more LED's, say 8 or 10, then you could do that with just an ATTiny84 very easily. The key to all of them though would be using the dual pot idea. In some circumstances, you might be able to get away without the dual pot, but you have to be able to feed all of these ideas so far a voltage that's proportional to the position of the knob.

If there's enough interest in something like this, I can put together a board and a little program and make the board available on OSHPark. Of course, that would still mean people would need to come up with ways to program the chip. It's easy enough to do and can be done very cheaply, but you still have to go through the steps of doing it. 

[kothoma]

Perhaps this. 5 LEDs logarithmically spaced: AN6884, BA6124, KA2284, LB1403, ...

[Gledison]

The idea of using a dual pot is probably going to be the best approach then. Doing it with that LM3914 would be one fairly straight forward way to do it. But that is a pretty big IC. There are probably other LED drivers that can do similar things.

But, if all you are looking for is 4 LED's, then you could get that from a simple little program and an ATTiny13. If you want a few more LED's, say 8 or 10, then you could do that with just an ATTiny84 very easily. The key to all of them though would be using the dual pot idea. In some circumstances, you might be able to get away without the dual pot, but you have to be able to feed all of these ideas so far a voltage that's proportional to the position of the knob.

If there's enough interest in something like this, I can put together a board and a little program and make the board available on OSHPark. Of course, that would still mean people would need to come up with ways to program the chip. It's easy enough to do and can be done very cheaply, but you still have to go through the steps of doing it.

Hey RobA , dont know if it worth the work. I was just wondering if someone already did/thought about it!
Cheers