The quadrature encoder with acceleration would seem easiest, but it still needs coding. My bright (I claim…) idea is to use two potentiometers connected to two analogue arduino inputs (method ... and ...

I needed a rotary encoder — I pulled a cheap one out of one of those “49 boards for Arduino” kits you see around. Not the finest encoder in the land, I’m sure, but it should do the job.

Now that your rotary encoder hardware is up and running it’s time to tell your Arduino what to do with the encoder signals. There are the two basic ways to read a microcontroller’s digital input. With ...