Desktop Scroll Wheel and Volume Control!

Step 3: Desolder the encoder

Right, now it's time to pull out the mouse wheel from the hole that it sits in and bin it. Now flip over the board and find the holes where the encoder is soldered in (there should be 3 of them in a row). Make a note of which way the encoder points, or you'll solder it backwards and it won't work properly. Heat the solder points with your iron and use either solder wick or a desoldering pump to pull off the solder from the board, releasing the encoder.

Now in each of the holes that the encoder was sat in, solder a different colour of wire. These will need to be about 3-6 inches long depending on your project box size. Now you have a choice. You can either solder the wires directly onto the corresponding pins of the encoder or you can go into the magic cave and look for the chest of mystery (Page 132). No seriously, your second option is to use a piece of stripboard to connect the pins to the wires, as I did. This is a bit more durable than directly soldering the wires. In my picture I have bent the tabs on the encoder at right angles to the actual component and have already glued in my metal rod.