Anyone using Ultimarc Trackball with Oscar's USB Mouse

[GamingGreg]

I'm having trouble interfacing my 2 1/2" Ultimarc trackball with the Oscar Controls USB mouse hack.  My Oscar spinner works fine with the other mouse, and also this one so I know that works.  However I can't get the trackball working.

I noticed that the pinout's on the trackball were different from the spinner board (ground was at the other end and the two signal wires are in the middle).  I made the appropriate changes to connect it to the USB mouse, but still nothing.  

I made sure that 5volts was connected in the middle of the three pins on the X-axis (and Y-axis) on the mouse board, and ground went the the single pin at the top, and the signal wires went on the other pins on the axis inputs.

Any ideas why this might not be working?  Is the encoder board on this trackball not compatible with the mouse board?  Has anyone done this?

[Lilwolf]

I haven't tested that specific combo... but the answer is yes (a great 98% yes).

It works with almost all encoder cards.  You just need to know the pinouts.  And since you are buying a new one from someone who can answer your questions it will be no problem.

The only trouble is you will need to make your own cables.  But thats not that hard.

[OSCAR]

The USB mouse (and Hagstrom encoders for that matter) require a sourced optic circuit.  If that particular model of trackball is active low, then you may need to add 1k pull-up resistors across the signal outputs as shown in this schematic.  A1 & B1 in the schematic are the same as S1 & S2 on my optic board.

[GamingGreg]

Thanks Oscar, I think that's it!     I just noticed this blurb on the Ultimarc site that talked about using that trackball with an Optipac; "Set the jumper to 'A/LO' ".  So it does appear that the trackball is active low.

I believe I have several 1K resistors kicking around,  so I'll just have to put them to use now.  Off to do some more "hacking"...  

[GamingGreg]

I finished adding the 1K pullup resistors yesterday, and it WORKS now!    So that was definitely the case.  Thanks again for the help.

So for any of you trying to use a mouse with the Ultimarc or Wico 2 1/2" trackball, you'll need to do the same.  I put the pull up resistors on the mouse board, and not the trackball optic boards as there wasn't much room there.  Also pay attention to the pinouts as they are different from Oscar's spinner board.