Newbie Q: Wiring CompUSA Trackball

[teach42]

Ok, I have my cabinet built, I have my control basically put together and just about everything wired.  The last thing I have is my trackball.  It's a compusa crystal trackball.  I'm using an iPac and also have an Optipac as well.  What I want is to be able to use my trackball for games and as a mouse, and to use the two buttons next to it as a mouse left and right button as well as buttons for the game.  What I can't figure out is how to wire it up.  Here's what I"m guessing:
1) I wire the ground wires for the mouse buttons the same way I wired up the others and then I run the other wires to the Play1 L & R slots on the OptiPac. This bypasses the circuit board of the trackball entirely.
2) I need to wire the optics of the trackball up to the +5v, GND, X1,X2,Y1, and Y2 on the OptiPac.  This is where I'm really haven't the problem.  How do I know WHERE to wire these up to on the trackball's circuit board?  There's about 5 solder points on the opposite side of the optics.  How do I know which is X1, which is X2, which is the Ground and so on?  I"m attaching a photo to this post of the top side of the circuit board and a photo in the next post of the bottom side of the circuit board.

ANY help would be greatly appreciated!

[teach42]

And the other side.

[jerryjanis]

Hmm, if I understand you correctly, you want to take apart your PC trackball and interface it through the Opti-pac.  Why do you want to do that?  Why not simply plug the PC trackball into your PC as-is (without using the Opti-Pac)?

[teach42]

Two connected reasons:
1) I want to use actual arcade buttons as my left and right mouse buttons (to control a frontend/windows).  As I understand it, I have to do that through the optipac.

IF, I have to do that through the optipac, then I need to use my serial port to connect the optipac to the computer.  If I have the optipac plugged in through the serial port, the trackball can't be connected through the serial port.

I could avoid the whole wiring problem entirely if someone could tell me how to map two arcade buttons to be mouse Left and Right buttons through an iPac.  If that's possible, then I don't need to use the optipac at all.  If that's not possible, then my original question stands

[jerryjanis]

Two connected reasons:
1) I want to use actual arcade buttons as my left and right mouse buttons (to control a frontend/windows).  As I understand it, I have to do that through the optipac.

Not true.  Trying to use the Opti-Pac is only going to make it more difficult and confusing.  What I would do would be to use some desoldering braid (from Radio Shack) and remove the mouse buttons (the switches themselves) from your trackball's circuit board, and wire the arcade button to the circuit board.  On a mouse that I used, there were 3 connectors.  I think that they should be soldered to the 3 connections on the arcade button's microswitch.  It will take some experimentation, I think, to figure out which wires go where, but it should not be difficult since there are only a few possible combinations.

Other alternatives?

If want to avoid any soldering, you can hook up your PC trackball, and not use those mouse buttons at all.  Instead, wire your arcade buttons directly to the Opti-Pac.  Wasting an entire Opti-Pac just for 2 lousy mouse buttons, in my opinion, is a way overkill.

There's gotta be software out there that will let you simulate the pressing of a mouse button with a keyboard button.  Then you could just wire a button to the I-Pac, run the software, and you might be all set.

[teach42]

Ok, that sounds like a reasonable way to go.  Any idea what software to use for that though?  I can't even imagine what keywords to search with.  Mouse, keyboard and switch??  That might come up with a few million hits

[jerryjanis]

I gotta say that the best route to go is the first way I mentioned.  If you wire the arcade buttons to the trackball circuitboard, your system will work exactly how you would expect.  I only offer the no-solder option if you really really don't want to solder.  And by the way, soldering the buttons is probably the one of the easiest mouse hack soldering projects you can do.  With any kind of software solutions you can never really be sure of how well they're going to do what you want because.

That aside, I did a google search for "control mouse using keyboard" and the first program that came up is the Key Mouse Genie.  It's a $10.00 shareware program.  It would probably do the trick for the most part.

If you decide to do it with software, you should probably post a message in the Software forum asking for advice, and maybe someone who has actually tried it can suggest something better/cheaper than the silly Key Mouse Genie.

[teach42]

Welps, I'm on my way to do the former anyway.  I've already got the old buttons unsoldered and am going to solder in some new wires tomorrow.  One final question though, on all my other buttons, I only have two wires soldered and left one part empty (the part that would cause the button to be on all the time except for when you push it).  There's three slots to each mouse button on the trackball circuit board.  I'm assuming that I should wind up only using two of them and connecting the two that work together to the arcade buttons, right?

[jerryjanis]

Welps, I'm on my way to do the former anyway.

You won't regret it.

There's three slots to each mouse button on the trackball circuit board.  I'm assuming that I should wind up only using two of them and connecting the two that work together to the arcade buttons, right?

No, you should use all three (I think).

When I have done it in the past, I only used two wires.  However, when I was typing messages in this thread, I started wondering if maybe the correct way would be to connect the 3 wires to the 3 connections on the arcade microswitch.

I just did some tests.  I compared the microswitch that I desoldered from a mouse to an arcade microswitch.  Both have 3 connections, and they appear to do the same thing for the mouse and for the arcade button.





The red line indicates where the connection is made in each case.

Since the two types of switches are the same, and the circuitboard supplies connections for all 3, I recommend wiring all three to the 3 connections on the circuitboard.  

In fact, I should do this to my hacked mouse.