Spinners: how they work

[Gideon]

Hi, everyone.  Lately, I've been getting excited over the possibilty of using a spinner on my control panel.  I had been planning on purchasing one from Oscar Controls, but I've since lost some interest.  So, I'd like to learn a little about how they work, and in the process of asking questions, I'll tell you my story.

I'm running Win98 (note the absence of "SE").  Actually, my computer boots straight into DOS7.  There is no USB support.  I play my spinner games like I do all other games in MAME--with a keyboard.  The spinner controls are, by default, mapped to the left and right arrows.

I want to get a spinner and hook it up to an I-Pac.  It seems like it would work.  Right now, I play spinner games on a keyboard, and the I-Pac is... well, a keyboard.  But, for some reason, it seems to be little more complicated.  According to the Oscar website, I can't do this; I'll have to buy an optical encoder, as opposed to a keyboard encoder.

That's understandable, in a way.  A spinner works differently than a keyboard.

My question is, why can't the spinner do things differently and make a closed circuit every time that little wheel goes past the light beam?  In this way, it would work just like a microswitch, and I could hook it up to the KeyWiz or I-Pac or whatever.  Help, please.

[Lilwolf]

They work like mice..

it would be a polling issue mainly (why not to do it with a keyboard)... because you can expect that there are about 40+ keys on a mouses encoder wheel... so for ever turn of that small ball bearing in the mouse, it would click the keyboard 40 times.  I don't believe you could get even the best mouse on the market to handle few thousand keys in less then a second.

I believe that you can use the Oscars USB mouse hack to work with a USB -> PS2 converter.  This will allow you to use dos without problems.

[Gideon]

They work like mice..

it would be a polling issue mainly (why not to do it with a keyboard)... because you can expect that there are about 40+ keys on a mouses encoder wheel... so for ever turn of that small ball bearing in the mouse, it would click the keyboard 40 times.

Hmm... I was following you, but I don't understand what you mean by 40+ keys on the encoder.

[NoOne=NBA=]

My question is, why can't the spinner do things differently and make a closed circuit every time that little wheel goes past the light beam?  In this way, it would work just like a microswitch, and I could hook it up to the KeyWiz or I-Pac or whatever.  Help, please.

That is basically what it does.
The optical encoders (Opti-pac/Mouse Hack/etc...) are necessary to read DIRECTION out of the mess of signals that get sent when you move it.
You could hook it to an I-pac, and it would know THAT you were moving, but couldn't determine WHERE you were moving.

[nighthawk2099]

Actually, I don't think you could hook it to an Ipac since the signal from the spinner uses optics instead of micro switches or key strokes, thus a spinner require you to hook to an Opti-pac or Mouse hack (see above messages).  It uses the same idea (if not exactly same idea) as your mouse, that's why many people can use old mice to build their own spinners.  

What Lilwolf was saying about the 40+ keys means that, you see movement in spinner games by using the keyboard because of Repeated Key Press (you hold down the arrow key, and that key is passed over and over and over until you let go) each key pass is read as one step thus the movement.  The optic wheel does the same thing (in a way) by turning an optic switch on/off/on at a higher rate of speed.  Thus instead of the jerky movement with a key press, the movement is smoother.  Kind of like playing a driving game with a keyboard versus a steering wheel.

Ok... my head hurts, I'm babbling.... and prob. screwed the whole thing up.....  If I am REALLY out in left field, somebody please correct me.  

[KevSteele]

Spinners are basically single-axis mice, and work the same way as a mouse for detecting movement - they have a optic boards that have both a light emitter and detector, which detects interruptions in the light when something passes in front of it (like the "teeth" on an encoder wheel)

The optic encoder not only detects the interruptions in the optic sensors, it's able to determine which way the wheel is moving, something very important, I'm sure you'd agree.  

I believe this is where the "dual optical pickup" comes in, as the encoder has to compare the two optics on the optic board and see which one is turning on first, and how fast they're "strobing."

You defintiely need some sort of optical encoder to use a spinner - your current choices are the Oscar USB mouse board, or the Ultimarc Optipac or MiniPac (which combines a keyboard and optic encoder in one unit) The SlikStik Tornado comes with it's own encoder built into the optic board.

I don't want to come across as a "promotion machine" here, but you might want to check out the "Spinner Roundup" I have on my site, as it has comparisons between seven different spinners:

http://www.retroblast.com/reviews/roundup.html

and my Tornado review:
http://www.retroblast.com/reviews/tornado.html

I'll slink off now...

Kevin

[ErikRuud]

The biggest difference between a real spinner and a keyboard emulated one is "velocity".

A real spinner not only gives directional control, but also velocity control.

You can spin the spinner fast or slow and the game respond accordingly.  With a keyboard you only get directional control and a fixed velocity.

Hokking a spinner into a keyboard emulator would require a whole ne interface circuit, and I doubt that you could get the velocity part to work right.

For DOS, you can use a ps/2 or serial  mouse hack for the spinner.  When I ran on a dos based machine, I had a PS/2 trackball and a spinner that was based on a serial mouse hack.  

I still use them on my upgraded machine that runs under windows.

[Lilwolf]

btw, what I ment is down more of a hardware level.

the optics will 'click' for each opening in the wheel... per turn.  So if you hooked the optics up directly to the ipac, it would try to send 120+ clicks per mouse move...

I was trying to say that they are apples and oranges... just doing a very bad job....

anyway.. hacks are based on this

boolean / digitial - hack to a keyboard encoder.
trackball / 360 wheel / spinner - hack to a mouse
270 wheel / analog controller - hack to a joystick.

[Gideon]

The biggest difference between a real spinner and a keyboard emulated one is "velocity".

A real spinner not only gives directional control, but also velocity control.

Okay, I understand this.  But, because this is all digital, isn't the velocity just an illusion?  It seems to me that velocity could be simulated in a spinner keyboard encoder as the frequency of keystrokes.  Maybe not, though.

But, it's cool.  I appreciate each of the work-arounds, links, and solutions you all brought up.

Here's how I'm seeing it now:  If I am to compare a spinner to two keyboard buttons, I'll have to understand that the keyboard buttons operate on a fixed velocity.  This is determined by the repeated key press rate of the OS or whatever.  The optical encoder of a spinner works in much the same way--detecting a "press" either left or right--only it changes the "repeated key press" rate in order to match the latest velocity of the actual, turning wheel.  The rate is dynamic because, well, it's a wheel--not a button.

But, it still goes binary at some point, and a keyboard press is binary... so, I was hoping...