Hi
I don’t think anything has changed.
The three pins are the encoder with common in the centre. The two pins are switch which can be wired either way.
There is sometimes a capacitor on encoder PCBs to act as a filter but this is not necessarily required and generally reduces risk of false triggers, i.e. is not required to get the thing working (or at least partially working).
Pretty unlikely. I have never had any completely broken encoders and I have bought a lot of cheap units.
That is more of someone’s rule of thumb. It depends on the wires used, the quality of the ground, the routing of the wires, etc. At these currents and these speeds I would expect you to be able to use a single common ground pin for all connections.
No, they do not but you do need to configure them all in webconf.
I think this is most likely your issue. Assign valid and free GPI for all four switches and all four encoders. I seem to remember (not checked the code today) that there is a constraint that partial configuration is not acceptable.
Indeed! The encoders and switches act as switches between the GPI pin and ground reference. The GPI is held high by internal resistors and when the switch closes it pulls the GPI low which is detected by code running on the Raspberry Pi. (Encoders are just two switches that open and close in a particular pattern.)
Please report this as an issue.
This is more of hacker info. The official kit should just work and should be properly documented in the official documentation. The forum is a good place to ask, answer and search for info on non-standard builds like this. It can be a haystack with you not knowing if that precious needle of info is in there so it is good if questions and answers are clear, unambiguous, fully descriptive and ideally, edited for accuracy.
I would suggest you configure the hardware in webconf for all the GPIs for the 4 switches and encoders then try just one switch first, e.g. BACK switch. This should allow you to see that the simplest action is working. If not you can diagnose that simple issue. If it is then you can start to add more switches and encoders, diagnosing issues as they arise without trying to boil the ocean!
Good luck.