Tindie Blog | Touchwheel0, a Capacitive Touch Wheel

Although I never actually owned one I do remember playing with an iPod touch wheel when they first came out. Such a lovely way to interact with lists, but a touch wheel can be used for so much more. If you want to experiment with capacitive touch in a circular form then the Touchwheel0 from Todbot Synth Toys is definitely worth a look.

It’s a 30mm diameter wheel on a neat rectangular PCB with mount holes. Sold as a bare board it is supplied with three 0805 surface mount resistors that need soldering to the board. 0805 packages are pretty chunky and are straightforward to solder even for relative beginners. There are 4 pin pads on the PCB, these are -, A, B, and C. The three pins need to be connected to 3 digital GPIO pins on your microcontroller of choice and there are included examples for CircuitPython and Arduino giving you a good start in connecting this to a wide range of systems.

The examples show you how to convert the raw output from the pins into 0-360 degree angle measurements and you can see in the video below an example of two Touchwheel0 controlling two NeoPixel rings. With a hole through the centre of the touch wheel, Tod mentions you could potentially add a button which instantly makes me think of lots of controller ideas! We look forward to seeing what people come up with with these.