You need the following things to bould your own GameChatBalancer:
- 1 Arduino or compatible microcontroller. I recommend a Seeed Xiao SAMD21 Cortex M0+
- 1 Linear potentiometer with a low tolarance for the best result. I used a Alpha RV16AF20KB10KM (tolerance: +-5%)
- 1 Knob, which will be set on top of the potentiometer
- 20-30 cm isolated copper wire
- 1 USB cable matching the connection of your microcontroller of choice. The Seeed board has a USB-C connector.
- soldering iron to connect the potentiometer to your microcontroller
- some kind of housing for the microcontroller and the potentiometer
Have a look at the Readme.md to get an cost overview and links to products.
- The potentiometer is connected to an analog pin (A*) of your Arduino (or compatible) board. It is powered from the board's 5V (or 3.3V for a Seeed board) output (see schematic)
- GND = black
- 5V / 3.3V = red
- Signal = green
- The board is conected via an USB cable to the PC.
In the schematic below, you find two options:
- Left is the setup with the Seeed Xiao SAMD21 Cortex M0+. Ensure to connect the potentiometer to the 3.3V output of the board as the 5V will probably kill the board's microcontroller.
- Right is the setup with an Arduino.
If you connect everything exactly as shown in the schematic, the potentiometer will be connected to the A0 pin of your microcontroller. If you used another Analog pin, you need to change the sketch before uploading it to your board. See below
Prerequisite: You should have the Arduino IDE installed on your PC. You can download it here.
- Download the file GCBalancer.ino from the latest release of this project (you should find it at the right side under "Releases").
- Open the downloaded sketch GCBalancer.ino with the installed Arduino IDE
- Follow the instructions "How to upload a sketch with the Arduino IDE 2" from the [Arduino website] (https://docs.arduino.cc/software/ide-v2/tutorials/getting-started/ide-v2-uploading-a-sketch)
You can change the used analog pin in line 1 of the sketch. Change the value to whatever the output pin of your potentiometer (green line in the shematic above) is connected to.
After uploading the sketch, open the serial monitor of thr Arduino IDE by choosing Tools -> Serial Monitor (or by pressing strg + shift + M).
If you turn the potentiometer (or move the slider) you should see values between 0 and 100 coming in. If this is true: Congratulations! Your device is working as it should.
Close the serial monitor. Keeping it open might prevent you from uploading a sketch in the future.
- Download the file GCBalancer_win.zip from the latest release of this project (you should find it at the right side under "Releases").
- Store the content of the ZIP file in any folder of your choice.
- Run GCBalancer.exe from the folder above.
- Optional: Add GCBalancer.exe to Autostart if you want to run it at system startup.
- Press
Win+Rto open the Run menu - Type shell:startup and press enter
- Right click and create a new link to GCBalancer.exe
- Press
The application will start in the systray:
A right click will open the context menu. The first row shows the connection status (COM4) to your DIY hardware device. The second row shows the last recieved value (59) from the hardware.
Clicking on Show will open the GUI so that you can configure GameChatBalancer:
The two symbols on the left ("Equalizer" and "Bug") let you switch between the Settings and Debug area.
The settings area is your command center for this application. It has two main areas:
- Hardware properties
- Audio settings
We will start with the hardware properties as this might be of interest on the first startup.
In the Hardware properties area, you can choose the COM port for your DIY hardware. Usually it should be a COM port greater than COM2. I recomment to leave this setting to "Auto". In this case GameChatBalancer will auto-detect your DIY hardware by doing a basic handshake (syn <> ack).
If your device is properly connected the checkbox "Connected" will be checked. Otherwise in a disconnected state this checkbox will be unchecked.
Here you can set the Noise reduction level for your Arduino. Changing this setting will be confirmed by the hardware. In this case the Checkbox "NR confirmed" will be checked.
As cheap potentiometers / sliders can cause noise, it is important to modify this setting to the quality of used components.
What is noise? - The Arduino / Seeed XIAO microcontroller reads the analog resistor value of your potentiometer, resulting in values between 0 and 1023. If you do not touch your potentiometer, this value should be static. If you turn your potentiometer to the middle position, this value should be ~512. A cheap potentiometer has a higher tolerance, meaning that this value will not be static, but will vary for example between 508 and 516.
Why is noise bad? - To reduce the traffic on the Com port and to reduce the CPU load of your PC, the Arduino sketch is implemented to only send a value to the PC, if it deviates from the previously sent value. No turn on the potentiometer -> No change in values -> No data is sent to the PC -> GameChantBalancer Systray application keeps sleeping. Noise will cause a constant stream of new values between the Arduino and your PC and might cause an increased CPU load as the volume settings for applications are constantly modified.
Which level of noise reduction should I use? - If you want to validate if the chosen noise reduction level matches the quality of your potentiometer, use the Debug area as follows.
- Enable debugging
- Start with Noise reduction set to off.
- Wait until the microcontroller confirms the chosen debug level. (Checkbox "NR confirmed" (Settings - Hardware properties) is checked.)
- Change to the Debug area
- Do not turn the potentiometer or move the slider
- If the debug window shows a lot of altering values coming in, change to a higher noise reduction level.
- Return with #3, except you already reached the noise reduction level "High". ;-)
What is the downside of noise reduction? - If noise reduction is set to medium or high, the application will "drop" 1 value at level medium und 2 values at level high if you change the direction when turning the potentiometer. The reason is that those values are buffered and not sent by the microcontroller. At level high it will look as follows (example):
- Initial value 50
- Turn the potentiometer left until you reach 45
- Start turing the potentiometer right. The first value will be 48 instead of 46 as 45, 46 and 47 are in the local buffer for noise reduction.
The audio settings are located above the Hardware properties.
You can assign applications to the chat (yellow) or game (green) category by dragging and dropping them from the list of available programs (blue). (see Video)
If a program you want to assign is not listed in the blue area:
- start the program
- press the refresh icon below the listbox - your program should appear now
- assign the program via drag & drop
If you mixed up the ground and power wires during the built, you can invert the behaviour of the potentiometer by checking the "Invert" checkbox in the Hardware properties.
You can see debug messages in the debug area of the application. To enable debug messages just activate the highlighted checkbox.
