Main > Main Forum

DIY Trackball

<< < (2/2)

PL1:
Will Happ red boards work with your trackball housing, ids?

--------------------------------

For anyone wanting to customize an encoder wheel, there is some useful info in this thread.
https://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,167034.0.html




Scott

ids:

--- Quote from: PL1 on August 07, 2025, 02:10:58 am ---Will Happ red boards work with your trackball housing, ids?

--- End quote ---

They should technically work, but mounting them will require adjusting the model, or doing some post-printing wizardry to get them in just the right spot.
Loading the scad file into OpenSCAD will let you tweak a lot of details, including board dimensions, but cannot confirm 100% that it will work for any given board as I am unable to test it myself.  You could try, and then print just a subset of the model to test the fit.
The model optionally displays a green board of my own design, which is largely hard-coded, so the visuals wont help if you tweak parameters for a Happ red board.  This is def. something I can improve upon.
If you aren't up to the task with OpenSCAD, and you are in possession of red boards, I could provide the model tweaks if you can provide dimensions.
I would need board width, height, thickness, gaps around edge of board to slot into holders, details about where on the board the optical units are and how oriented and so on.

PL1:
Thanks for the offer, ids.  Your OpenSCAD code looks great.   :cheers:

The old UTrak is still going strong and I've designed/posted a number of OpenSCAD models both here on BYOAC and on Thingiverse.

Figured that someone might want to use Happ A052-1011-00 red boards with your model since they perform so well for Golden Tee and Marble Madness compared to some other optical boards like the old Happ A052-1010-00 green boards. (less waveform rounding ==> lower chance of backspin)
- IIRC the old Happ green boards fit the same as Happ red boards.

Unfortunately, no Happ red boards here so I can't help with measurements/testing.   :dunno


Scott

ids:
Thanks for the kind words.

What kinda stuff have you modelled?

If anyone can provide red-board dimensions, I can certainly plug in the details.

Started testing my own boards - think I need to tweak my encoder wheels a bit, not getting quite the quadrature read I need.  Have set up a simple animation in OpenSCAD and think I found a good configuration.  Will print and test soon-ish.

PL1:

--- Quote from: ids on August 12, 2025, 07:14:17 pm ---What kinda stuff have you modelled?

--- End quote ---
A wide variety of (100+?) items over the last seven years from beam break sensor mounts to a toilet repair part, simple test prints to pinball drop target parts, Ikari Warriors (LS-30) rotary joystick handles/dust washer to a customizable SW yoke mount. (the current WIP)

The list also includes some specialized controls like the Taito Aim-n-Fire, a spring-loaded analog potentiometer baseball bat, a bike pedals to spinner adapter for Prop Cycle, a mini twin top-fire stick controller for BattleZone, etc.

A quick forum search for my posts containing "OpenSCAD" returns over 40 hits.

Some of the designs are on my Thingiverse page.  https://www.thingiverse.com/pl1/designs


Scott

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page