L&I 01 ~ LED Fade

I put together a rotary encoder controlled LED. The rotation of the encoder controls the speed at which the fade occurs, and the button-press of the encoder resets that speed to a step of 1. The step can be changed from 0-30.

This is built on top of the Sine wave example provided.

code on github · leils/itp_spr_2023

I chose to use a rotary encoder because of how satisfying I find the tangible clicking. On my first pass, I ran into some difficulty figuring out how to map an unbound rotating input to this fade; I think more work can be done here to make a more intuitive control.

Learning & Takeaways:

• Rotary encoders have a very different feeling from potentiometers, and their clicking sensation provides nice feedback when used.
• The Nano IOT 33’s A0 pin is reserved and cannot be used for this kind of analog out (whoops). When trying a linear fade based on the default Arduino example, I found the timing of the fade was funny, and when I was then encountering difficulty setting the pin to an output, I needed to check the pin charts.
• Using the EncoderStepCounter Library, the built-in position value rolls over at 128. Unexpected but not a roadblock, perhaps this position value is more built to track individual rotation changes (ie. one interaction) rather than an overall position number.