i am currently working with some power supply design and i can say using conventional pots(potentiometer) and rotary switch to adjust the voltage and other stuff is quite old school. so i have decided to go for a bit high tech , actually bit digital.
so here is the solution
Incremental Rotary Encoder
first of all i would like to tell you , these type of rotary encoder is totally digital component so you can't directly replace these with you conventional pots. so lets start what are Incremental Rotary Encoder , Incremental rotary encoders by the looks of it just like a general purpose pot looks like but output is quite different they provide a pair of digital signals that allow a microcontroller to determine the direction of a shaft’s rotation. They can be used to monitor motors and mechanisms, or to provide a control-knob user interface.
for a quick look here is a typical incremental rotary encoder
