Potential for my trackball hack?

[Antiriad2097]

I'm in the early concept/planning stage for a cab but as usual I'm on a tight budget.

I have a Kensington Expert Mouse (Trackball), model no 64215 v5.0. (For pic of a similar model, see here: http://www.kensington.com/html/1175.html)

The trackball itself is nicely constructed and is near perfect for a neat control panel mounting, but performance is, well, ok. It works, but the resolution is quite low - any fast spin completely loses it and the mouse actually moves slower, something I presume is better in other models.

What I want to know is: Can I fix a standard optical mouse upside down under the trackball?

Given the proximity of the ball to the base of the trackball case, I thought it might work if I simply drill a hole through the base. Mounting a higher resolution optical mouse upside down/back to front directly onto the base of the trackball should then (in theory) allow the trackball to be read as a moving surface under (ok, over) the static mouse.

Has this been tried before?

Does it work?

Are there any problems with this?

I fear the trackball itself may be too plain or too reflective for a good pickup by the optical mouse sensor, but I can't try it as all my mice are old 'ball' ones.

If it is known to work, I'll forge ahead. If its known not to, then I may have to rethink. If its unknown, then we may find out soon  

Any takers?

[jerryjanis]

I know this has been brought up before, but I don't recall anybody actually trying it...

Sounds expensive (optical mice are often kinda expensive), and you'll probably end up with something that isn't very arcadey at all...

If you're broke, I say just stick with a poorly working Kensington until you can save up a few dollars.  You can get a new trackball from http://www.wicothesource.com for $24.99 and Oscar's USB mouse hack for like $8.

I use a USB mouse hack and an ancient/used wico trackball and it's really nice.

[Antiriad2097]

The ball feels right enough, nice and weighty, its just not as responsive at speed as I'd like.

As it seems to be an untested method and it won't destroy either component (other than a small fillable hole in the trackball base), I think I'll give it a go.

If it does fail, I can live with the trackball as is and my other main PC will have a nice new optical mouse  

As for costs, you'll find its not quite so inexpensive in the UK.

Other parts are reasonably well sourced - Happ have a UK distributor I can get sticks and buttons from. I've a PS1 to USB adapter, so plan to hack a PS1 pad for stick and button controls. I just feel a trackball is something of an essential for a multi-emulator/PC game cabinet. I just figured an optical mouse trackball hack would work out fractionally less expensive and be easier to set up - straight PS2 mouse connection with no wiring hacks, guaranteed to perform the same for all functions.

Thanks for the advice.

[jerryjanis]

As it seems to be an untested method and it won't destroy either component (other than a small fillable hole in the trackball base), I think I'll give it a go.

Cool...  I'm curious to know if it makes for an improvement, so make sure you post here when you're done!

The only reason that I have an optical mouse next to my computer is because I initially misconstrued what a mouse hack was...  When I read about "optics" I mistook that to mean "optical mouse".  I realized my mistake before I gave a real honest try at hacking my spinner with it (sorta like you are doing).

Good luck...  And by the way, I love my optical mouse - it was a great purchase!

[Antiriad2097]

Will post  results, but may be a few weeks. I'm in no rush as it'll just cost even more, so want to research best price/performance for mouse. Also have to wait for payday...

Not too complex a hack, so once its bought it won't take long.

[SirPoonga]

no, putting a mouse upside down will reverse one of the axis.  It will work well in mame if you switch the axis input in mame.  But everything else will be backwards.

I think left and right would be backwards (trying to imagine it in my head).

[jerryjanis]

I just tried it out (sorta).  I flipped my optical mouse up-side down and put my 2 1/4in. trackball on top of it (it didn't work very well holding the ball in my shaking hand but it seemed like it could work in a more solid environment).  You are corect, SirP - left/right is backwards, but up/down is Ok.

One thing I noticed is that it seemed abit over-sensitive.  At 640x480, a quarter rotation of the trackball would send the mouse from top to bottom.  My Wico trackball needs a full rotation for the mouse to travel that far.  If you try to spin the trackball fast, you are more likely to run into problems with a more sensitive device.  My trackball is probably twice as large as the one you are using, so that would probably help you...

There's only 1 way to find out if it will really work!

[Antiriad2097]

Not tried it out yet, but I picked up a cheap optical mouse recently. I've 2 weeks off work now, so I'll give it a go provided my other half's DIY plans don't consume all my time. It'll be interesting to see how successful it is, just for the record here if nothing else.

[pointdablame]

I played with this idea for a little while too. It doesn't work. Or I should say, I wasn't able to get it to work.....

[Antiriad2097]

One year later and an update. At this rate my cab will be retro before its even been built...

Tried it (the trackball died again). Doesn't work. My guess is that the optical sensor just can't get enough variation in the surface of the shiny trackball. Throw in some scatter from the reflective quality and its worse. It might work I suppose if you use a patterned ball, but with the parts I have to hand its a dud idea. Movement is erratic and fairly useless as an accurate control method.

At least now we all know. And I enjoyed the book in between times (well, you have to plug it, don't you).

[gregor7777]

Here's an old thread...

On a side note, I have a Kensington expert Trackball that is also very similiar to the one depicted in the authors post.

Has anyone else here used a similiar Kensington trackball and successfuly installed it into their control panel? Just dropping it in would be simple enough but I fear would look out of place. Has anyone taken it apart so it sits flush with their control panel?

[missioncontrol]

I'm planning on taking mine apart and mounting it flush...I'll let everyone know how it goes when I get it done...

[Antiriad2097]

In priniciple it should be pretty easy to surface mount. Having taken mine apart, the top cover doesn't do much that the cp wouldn't - its basically just a retaining ring. The join of the 2 halves of the trackball shell is flat rather than curved, so should mate with the cp nicely. Its also very spacious inside, so there's plenty of room to drill through for screws to hold it to the panel (no doubt best done with it in situ so you can centre the ball in the cp hole).

It'd be easy enough to wire up the buttons to arcade buttons too, but thats probably stating the obvious here.

The apparent ease of fitting and the fact I got it free were the reasons I wanted to go with this ball. Fortunately, the last of my kids just left home a couple weeks ago so soon I'll have space to put a cab of my very own

[gregor7777]

In priniciple it should be pretty easy to surface mount. Having taken mine apart, the top cover doesn't do much that the cp wouldn't - its basically just a retaining ring. The join of the 2 halves of the trackball shell is flat rather than curved, so should mate with the cp nicely. Its also very spacious inside, so there's plenty of room to drill through for screws to hold it to the panel (no doubt best done with it in situ so you can centre the ball in the cp hole).

Cool, I think I may work on the trackball this weekend then. I'll take progress pics and post back if I do.

[MinerAl]

A while back I tried the upside down optical mouse thinggy.  Glassy smooth one color balls don't register very well.   I had difficulty getting the "laser" centered on the ball, but for all of that I did get it to kind-of work.

If you get a speckled or many colored ball you might have better luck, and if you can stand to have either L/R or U/D backwards in everything but MAME, you can probably get something cool going.

I eventually just got an Opti-PAC.

The best thing about those Kensington trackballs was that billiard balls fit perfectly.  See if you can find a custom speckled pool ball.

Good luck.

[LJHalfbreed]

Although this *technically* doesn't fit...


I was running into a problem with my trackball and spinner setup (both ps2) and was looking for a way to get one of them to work USB style. All the USB mice I had were all logitech, which I'm told are stupidly hard to hack right. Well, the only other USB mouse I had was a stupid Dell optical mouse. Thought about using it with my trackball (similar to how you were talking) and totally swapping out the ball for a textured cueball

http://billiardgate.com/aramithballs/
http://www.ozonebilliards.com/roycrowpremg.html

However, I couldn't find them as singles, and didn't want to have to spend 200 bucks just for one or two balls.


However, I did realize something, if you take a spinner shaft, remove the mouse-electronic bits, and basically put a vertically striped sleeve on it (think of a McDonalds Straw), the optics work frickin' great with a spinner, depending how thin you draw in those lines.

And the best part about this is that you technically don't even have to take apart the mouse... Might be great for those people totally afraid to hack things together or afraid of destroying a perfectly good mouse.


I'd still like to find a pool ball with a grid on it though... or a 'perfect pattern' like the logitech optical trackballs...

-LJ

[Bgnome]

i think stephen st hans' approach would be simpler than a striped axis..
http://home.t-online.de/home/stephan.hans/tricks.htm#SPINNER for superduperarcadeconsole

[LJHalfbreed]

Yeah, his definitely is... but Mine would be really simple to rig into a cab in a sort of holster for 'popping out the mouse' to be used for admin functions. Or, it could be a really really simple way of getting something to work on a really tight budget (or totally unable to solder to save your life), and if you don't like it anymore, you don't have to worry about wasting cash on a spent USB optic mouse. Can you tell I'm tired of buying stuff yet?

But I'm going to whip out the tools tonight/tomorrow and see if his pattern (optics facing flat of cylinder, instead of curve) would work better/worse. I was worried mainly about the optic mouse seeing the angles and wigging out, but I guess it really

Then again, mine's an obvious and nearly tech-less idiot-hack, so it's not like I had the greatest idea in the world... LOL

-LJ

PS. Thanks for the link, Bgnome!