Volume Control for PC

[sammy004]

Hi guys I didn't know where to post so I thought I would put it here. I just need to know is there any way I can build my own volume control for a PC so I can turn up and down the volume from the case. I build a HTPC case so far it looks good but it's missing a volume knob. any help will be appciated.

 

[Willbe]

A 1 kΩ pot in series with the existing loudspeaker?

 

[bananasiong]

A 1 kΩ pot in series with the existing loudspeaker?

What? A 1kΩ pot in series with the speaker??

Hi sammy004,
How's the connection of your speaker?

 

[audioguru]

A pot in series with a speaker ruins the damping of resonances provided by the extremely low output impedance of the amplifier (0.04 ohms or less).
The pot will burn out unless it is huge because only a small part of it must dissipate a few Watts.

 

[Mikebits]

Why not just use the volume control from the Windows control panel?

 

[Willbe]

A pot in series with a speaker ruins the damping of resonances provided by the extremely low output impedance of the amplifier (0.04 ohms or less).
The pot will burn out unless it is huge because only a small part of it must dissipate a few Watts.

Yeah, damping factor is terrible. Not a hi-fi set, though.

On the pot, I actually meant it to be hooked up as a two-terminal rheostat.

See, that's why I held off going into production on this!!!

 

[sammy004]

I would like to hook it up to my PC like as if it a part of the computer. What I am doing is running a program called mediaportal that is a HTPC program and I can turn up/down the sound via remote but sometimes I can't find the remote and I would rather use the knob like on a stereo receiver.

 

[Torben]

The first thing I'd think is to find out what software hooks you need, then write a serial interface plugin for mediaportal which can monitor a digital pot (or maybe digitize a pot using ADC), and do it that way.

What is your budget? Can you write a mediaportal plugin?


Torben

 

[arunb]

You could use a micro-controller (must have serial I/Os and an ADC), that communicates to a program on the PC using the serial port. This should be easy as most mcus have dedicated pins for serial communication.

You can connect a pot (say 1 K ohm) to the analogue port of the mcu. So that varying the pot varies the analogue voltage given to the ADC port of the mcu.

When the ADC channel voltage is varied, the mcu sends a command to the PC application, the PC application could increase or decrease the audio volume using API calls.

An application in VB could be quite easily made that controls the audio settings and also communicates serially.


thanks
ab