If it’s $200 in parts then a premade item would be at least $400 and probably $500. There probably isn’t much of a market at those prices.
The bill of materials needs to come way down to sell it for much less than that. Buying the parts in hobbyist-level bulk (100 pcs) probably would only shave $100 from the final price.
I had dreamed of physical "analog" controls as a standard feature on keyboards and input devices for various applications -- would be great productivity booster for power users.
Nice - be interesting to see what kind of integrations they have for the knob (at a bare minimum I better be able to play break out and scrub video in da Vinci).
I use a Keychron Q2 which has a dial at the top-right - it's mostly pretty good though I wish it were a little bit easier to program and of course it doesn't have haptic feedback.
While I wish I had the time and talent to pursue this as a hobby - and I dabbled in PCBs and DIY electronics in youth - life has other plans.
I see some sibling commenta that link to keyboards with a knobs-- that is cool - but I am imagining having access to more than one knob so I have a bank of at least 5-6 knobs, slightly smaller than the DIY project, so I can program them for multiple uses like we do for Function Keys today.
Imagine stream deck with knobs instead of buttons - and available either as a separate USB/wireless device or as a simple "nuneric keypad" / "function keys /media keys" kind of addition to keyboards
I made a SpaceMouse the other day, it was really easy, mostly just the print. It took around an hour to assemble everything, I think? It also worked very well.
Ah yeah, that's much more work and I don't think it uses the official driver, which does a lot of the heavy lifting. I think maybe start with the other one and see how you like it, since it's mostly a few minutes of soldering.
https://github.com/scottbez1/smartknob
Video demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip641WmY4pA&t=1s