Spinner is reversed

[Zeppo]

Ok, I finally took the plunge and built my own spinner out of a hard drive motor following the directions on this page:
http://www.doughansen.net/arcade/spinner.htm

The only problem is that when I spin the thing, the cursor on the screen goes the opposite way.
Like in Tron, I spin the spinner clockwise, but the arm spins counter-clockwise.

How do I flip this?
My first guess is to take the plug off the mouse motherboard, pull the pins out, and flip them, but it is 2am now for me, and I am going to bed.

Thanks!

[destructor]

My first guess is to take the plug off the mouse motherboard, pull the pins out, and flip them,

Do it.

[vizzinni]

You can also reverse it thru the software.  Within a game, press Tab, then select Analog Controls, then set Dial Reverse to On.  But with this method you have to do it for every game, although only once per game.

[Kremmit]

My first guess is to take the plug off the mouse motherboard, pull the pins out, and flip them,

Do it.

No, don't.  If you did it exactly like the one you linked to, then the wires you're thinking about swaping are the wires on the USB or PS/2 connector.  Swapping those won't help, and could damage your mouse  and/or computer.

Pictures of your actual project would help a lot in reccomending a fix.  Until then, I'll work with the one from the project you linked to, located here:  http://www.doughansen.net/arcade/spinner/spinnerdraw



Your problem is that the spoked encoder wheel is spinning through the optics on your mouse in the opposite direction from what you need it to do.  If you have room to turn the mouse circuit board upside down, that will fix it.  If you don't have room for that, do you have room to turn it sideways so that you use the other set of optics, the ones for up/down motion?  Maybe you can orient the circuit board the right way using those.

If there isn't room for either of these, there are still options left:  extend the shaft on the encoder wheel so that there is room, or break out the soldering iron.  If you're into soldering territory, we're really going to need pics, but the general idea is to cut the traces leading to the two outside pins on the optical receiver and then solder jumpers that swap those two pins.  Or I guess you could just de-solder the emitter and the receiver and mount them on their own board.  Or, you could do the software fix mentioned above. 

[severdhed]

I had the same problem when i built mine, I ended up using some old logitech mouse software to reverse the axis. I think I still have the software somewhere, i can look for it tonight when i get home.

(it only works if the mouse is connected via a PS2 port)

[Zeppo]

yeah, after some sleep, the next morning I started looking at the wires coming from the mouse.
There are only 5.
One for ground, one for voltage, then 3 more.
In those three would need to be a clock signal, movement data, and mouse click signal.
Just a guess.
So there aren't wires for left/right, up/down like I was hoping.

I was trying to figure out a way to turn the board upside down, but there wasn't enough room, so I may go with extending the decoder wheel later, thanks Kremmit.

I'll just stick with the software option originally mentioned by Vizzinni, but if you can find the info on the logitech software, I'll try that Sev.

Thanks all.

[Thenasty]

here is all you need to do:

On the sensor there are 3 wires (soldered) where you encoder wheel is.
all you need to do is un-soldered the left and right leave the middle alone and using a wire to re-soldered it but the left now will be solderd to right and right to left..hope made sense....
Make sure bend the legs out so it won't be touching the original soldered spot and re-solder the wire into the legs.


or if you like, maybe its better too, trace the line and cut it (exacto knife) making the line open and solder a wire from the spot and re-solder it to the oposite side....hope you see the picture...