Desktop Scroll Wheel and Volume Control!

Step 8 Take it a step further

I wanted to emulate the PowerMate as far as I could, so a little googling later turned up this awesome piece of software called Volumouse: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/volumouse.html

Basically it lets you adjust the Volume of your PC by holding a keyboard button and scrolling up/down. As well as this, it will show a little slider that shows the percentage volume that your PC is at. It will also resize windows using the wheel and change brightness, all according to the conditions you give it.

Here's a demo video of the wheel with Volumouse installed and running, with the Window Resize plugin installed.

And that's it! If it looks like I've missed anything out, or if you have a question, feel free to comment and rate!

Comments

[whooms]

I don no ... but mine didn't work .... it's still like a mouse ... but a butchered one ... clicks still work like before (like right click or somethin') ... and when i scroll the handle thing.... nothin' happens ...:(

[arepark]

whatsisface, you say that an IR setup is no good for this. what is the reasoning behind this? Reason I ask is I made a wheel following another post and used an IR setup. I have been using it for a few days and today it seems to be generating phantom mouse clicks. Caused by the IR? Any ideas?

[crazzzik]

Is there any other piece of software for this needs? I think the idea is to actually be able to use second mouse INDEPENDENTLY from main mouse. By that I mean using just a wheel without keystrokes or use mouse buttons as modifiers

[avibank911]

this is just what ive been looking for thanks. can i map the controler wheel to a program like Guitar Rig 3 ? ive tried to using my mouse but it only recognizes input frm the keyboard as midi.(midi is used to controll things in this program.)basicaly need a software similar to volumouse but lets you choose any app to map it to and that lets it act as controller. thanks again

[whatsisface]

I have a feeling this may be what you're looking for:

http://www.fileguru.com/WheelKeys/info

It lets you make the scroll wheel up/down send specific keystrokes to specified programs.

[avibank911]

thanks for help but it didn work i have a bad feeling i gonna have to get into the actual core of guitar rig to program it to accept continuose messages from a mouse. other wise i think a joystick may work.. will post results wen i get joystick.

[eggplanthunter]

thanks for the link. That program looks perfect for this. Seems a bit difficult to set up the .txt file though >_>

[roystonlodge]

Neat idea. I wonder if there are any driving games that allow you to steer using the scroll wheel, because this device would make a great portable steering controller for playing games on a laptop. It would also be great for playing Arkanoid/Breakout games if a way could be devised to map the control to the scroll wheel instead of the arrow keys or the mouse's x-axis. My favourite is still the old DOS version of Arkanoid, which I play via DOSBOX running on Damn Small Linux.

[ekulmeekul]

i guess you could adjust the setting ingame to allow steering through scroll wheel

[roystonlodge]

The old DOS games I like don't gave a lot of in-game control customization. However, now that I think about it, it shouldn't be too difficult to take an old mouse and create desktop wheels from the rollers INSIDE the housing where the ball is kept. With that method I could take an old mouse and get THREE desktop wheels out of it (one for the x-axis, one for the y-axis, and one for the scroll wheel). It would be like using an etch-a-sketch as an I/O device! (I think I've found the inspiration for my first instructable, if I can get it to work...)

[ekulmeekul]

should work great! really good idea!!! the problem is finding a ball mouse that has a scroll!

[whatsisface]

The one I used here has a scroll, but it was an encoder one.

[cheetooh]

Thank you very much. This is really great. Something 2 do 4 d weekend :)

[whatsisface]

Thanks =]

[dagger576]

This is cool... I'm already thinking about kitschy items I could use to scroll with. By the way, what was the music playing on the video?

[whatsisface]

Thanks for the comment. The music was "The Hives are law, you are crime" by The Hives.