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Volkswagen Will Bring Back Physical Buttons In New Cars | Down with touch screen controls. (insideevs.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Volkswagen Will Bring Back Physical Buttons In New Cars | Down with touch screen controls.::Volkswagen says that it has heard the feedback from its customers. It plans to bring back physical buttons and controls in future models.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It’s because the knobs control software and the software is buggy. The volume knob is not connected to the amp for instance.

The knob or switch longevity isn’t even in question yet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

If the volume knob was connected to the amp you'd hear the static from a shitty potentiometer that's wearing out. Instead what you get is a volume knob that occasionally skips steps because it's an electromechanical rotary encoder and doesn't rely on brushes rubbing against a gradient resistive wheel (that literally wears itself away over time which is why car manufacturers switched to rotary encoders in the first place).

The software sucks too (absolutely!) but it's pretty obvious when the problem is one of the following:

Skipped control (e.g. volume) steps. Indicates that a contact has worn out (oxidized too much).
The car suddenly thinks a knob is being turned constantly in one direction (e.g. volume suddenly goes up up up or down down down sometimes forever until you move the knob). This can be "bouncing" or just a contact that's getting stuck (because dust/car gunk got in there).

These two things are clear indicators of electromechanical components failing. Not normally caused by buggy software.

Neither of these things happen when you use hall effect switches or hall effect rotary encoders (for knobs).