Electronic enthusiasts, hobbyists and engineers looking for an open source rotary encoder complete with a circular 1.2 inch programmable TFT circular display may be interested in the Roendi.

I needed a rotary encoder — I pulled a cheap one out of one of those “49 boards for Arduino” kits you see around. Not the finest encoder in the land, I’m sure, but it should do the job.

Anyone searching for a way to connect multiple rotary encoders on the I2C bus, may be interested in a new piece of hardware created by Simone based in Turin, Italy. The aptly named I2C Encoder V2 ...

He ended up exploring hard drive motors as encoders, and while the results aren’t exactly high resolution, he may be onto something. Starting with a teardown of some old HDDs — save those magnets!