Optipac Trackball/Vortex Spinner Question...

[JamesS]

Ok, this may be a dumb question, but here goes.

Do you have to have seperate grounds and 5v's for each device, or can you use just one 5v/ground, say from the trackball?

Also, does the Oscar need to have the optipac set to hi or lo?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[OSCAR]

As long as you get +5V & GND to the spinner optic board, that should be fine.  It shouldn't be necessary to run separate power and ground wires back to the Opti-PAC if you can get them from the trackball.

You can set the polarity jumper on the Opti-PAC to either Hi or Lo with my optic board, it doesn't matter.  Actually, you could remove the jumper altogether, but without anything connected to the Y-axis on the Opti-PAC header, the y-axis will "float" causing the cursor to drift in the y- direction as you scroll sideways.