Opti Wiz= Spinners

[TheMadMechanic]

I've been reading up on making my own spinner and several members have made some awesome home made spinner. So I decided to make my own spinner  for my CP  which also has a trackball.

It comes down to two options for me :

1. Opti-Wiz (I already have two). Now if I make my own optics board like this one (the ones Mike Grugel used to make) to read the encoder wheel can I just then hook it up to the Opti-Wiz?

2.My other option is to go the way of the mouse hack with a ps2 connector. So the mouse electronics has its own processor to interpret signals which get translated to something that an OS can understand. So in this case I can just hook up the mouse via a ps2 to usb adaptor to a USB hub then done.

I also have a PS2 trackball so if mame can understands and handle multiple mouse inputs so I should have no problems, I hope.

[RandyT]

1. Yes, this will work.

2.  This will also work....maybe.  It depends on the mouse.  Some have conventional optics, and some don't.  The ones which don't can possibly be twiddled into submission, but they aren't a straight forward connection.

The other thing you need to keep in mind is the resolution you are after.  The encoder wheels and optics need to be matched to work properly, so that is where the limiting factor will be.  The more mis-matched the two are, the more crucial alignment becomes.  Those optics are used with very low resolution trackball encoder wheels.  You can get more out of them, but it can be tricky.

[TheMadMechanic]

1. Yes, this will work.

2.  This will also work....maybe.  It depends on the mouse.  Some have conventional optics, and some don't.  The ones which don't can possibly be twiddled into submission, but they aren't a straight forward connection.

The other thing you need to keep in mind is the resolution you are after.  The encoder wheels and optics need to be matched to work properly, so that is where the limiting factor will be.  The more mis-matched the two are, the more crucial alignment becomes.  Those optics are used with very low resolution trackball encoder wheels.  You can get more out of them, but it can be tricky.

Thanks Randy.. didn't expect an answer from the source