I saw the Reading the Rotary Encoders page in the Arduino Playground and this got me thinking about making a Hand Held Pendant for my low end 2 axis machine. They used an ALPS STEC12E08 encoder which has 24 steps per turn and they offered some code to play with but it won't quite do what I want it to do, as is.

I have thought that I would move the LCD from the main controller enclosure to the external box with the wheel, that I would get machine by a friend, a turn knob for choosing the axis, another for a multiplier, a manual mode switch and an all stop button.

Of course this is just for fun and not a necessary part of my project but it would be cheap to implement. I would hope that as I turned the main wheel, it would move the steppers and read out the moves on the screen.

I already saw Arduino EMC Pendant II but he uses a key pad and I didn't see any encoder code. I'm looking for something simple.

Does anyone know of some similar project that might have some code that I could look at so I can see if this is too much for this beginner code smith?