A control nOb For All Your Devices

Sometimes the old and trusted interfaces are best. How about a good old-fashioned dial to exactly control your input to your work? Anything you can control with your mouse or cursor, that is.

This is the premise of the nOb, a project on KickStarter. From analogue to digital. There are also two switches for further control and tweaking.

Flick a switch, and twist the dial, but not too much...

There's adjustable rotation resistance for the aluminium knob, and a "very precise industrial grade encoder" supports up to 2,400 ticks per revolution of the dial.

Apparently it is primarily aimed at those working in media production, mixing and mastering...

By intelligently emulating a Human Interface Device (NOT simply implementing a mouse scroll wheel), nOb is able to control virtually any parameter you would normally adjust with your mouse, delivering out-of-the-box compatibility with any operating system and software package. You simply have to point your mouse cursor to the parameter you want to control and use nOb's big knob to fine-tune it to taste. Based on the current mode of operation, any draggable interface element found in modern media production software can be controlled, including sliders, scrollbars, knobs or even draggable value indicators."

Additional productivity features include:

• Flip a switch to reverse drag direction of
• Double tap the knob to undo or redo last action
• Flip a switch to jump beweetn screen elements fo your choice

The makers say it can work with any programme or any OS. It works with Windows, Macs, Linux and Android out of the box.

It comes with an open serial interface, say the creators, so they hope developers will write software to customise nOb's functionality. Also, they say all hardware parts can be unscrewed and taken apart, allowing for hacks and other modifications.

At time of writing it has raised more than $30,000 towards a $52,000 goal, with 44 days to go.

I don't know quite what to make of this this. It wouldn't be of use to me, but it was flagged for attention by our Technology Editor, Steve Bush, which certainly makes it of interest.