Spinner that works as a button also

[Brad Lee]

To make a spinner that when pushed down also acts as a button, am I better off trying to keep the wheel&encoder stationary(at the same height) or making the whole assemly go up and down?

[CthulhuLuke]

My suggestion would be to head on over here, : http://www.1uparcade.com/projects-oscarupdown.html
 and take a look at how he got the discs of tron spinner to work, so you can more than likely use the same idea, but just have it go one way by blocking the other somehow, or you could leave it able to go up and down, and just have down assigned to a button.
   -CthulhuLuke

[Xiaou2]

To make a spinner that when pushed down also acts as a button, am I better off trying to keep the wheel&encoder stationary(at the same height) or making the whole assemly go up and down?

 In the original Discs of Tron spinner... it had the optics stationary... and a center shaft that moved up/down.  The center shaft had a small notch on it, which turned the outter shaft which had the encoder disc on it.   Its complicated to explain, so you might be better off looking for some pics of it online.

 

[1UP]

In the original Discs of Tron spinner... it had the optics stationary... and a center shaft that moved up/down.  The center shaft had a small notch on it, which turned the outter shaft which had the encoder disc on it.   Its complicated to explain, so you might be better off looking for some pics of it online.

Oh, that's how they did it...that's really brilliant!

As for my design, it's super simple.  It could easily be made to work only when pushed down, by simply removing the spring between the bottom of the panel and the flywheel, and using only one switch.

I recently bought an Oscar Pro, which is mounted entirely on a metal bracket.  I was thinking it would be pretty simple to mount the bracket to the control panel using 4 springs, so the whole works (optics and all) would move up and down, and just mount some switches to it...  But then I realized I've hardly played Discs of Tron since I made the first one, so I decided not to muck with Oscar's beautiful spinner!

I've been considering making a desktop control panel using some of my spare parts, including the up/down model 1 spinner, and  putting it up on ebay...  I might be willing to sell you just the modified spinner if you're interested...

[Brad Lee]

Well, after putting some parts together(Oscar's encoder wheel and optics module), it occurred to me that the gap between the led & sensor on the optics card is almost 1/4" and the lightchopper itself is only 1/32"

So, I came up with this..
For normal use, there is no contact between the end of the shaft and the switch directly below it


WHen pushed, the switch is triggered, and the encoder disk is still centered between the LEDs, the spring will return the spinner to its normal height


Very similar to 1up's pics , but missing a few parts.. I'll let ya know how it works