Arkanoid spinner questions

[MrBond]

Got my hands on an Arkanoid spinner, and it seems fine except for two things.  The gear that is on the main spinning shaft does not spin with the spinner.  What I mean is, the gear is not attacked to the shaft.  How do I fix this?  SuperGlue?  The other thing, it makes a sort of grinding noise.  Is this normal?

Another question, can I just wire this up like I did my trackball, except this is only one optic instead of 2?  (It has four wires coming from the optic, I assume the black is ground, red is power, and the other two are for the axis)  If I can't get it to work with my mouse hack, I'll go Opti-pac.

Thanks
~Mrbond

[seaner]

Another question, can I just wire this up like I did my trackball, except this is only one optic instead of 2?

Yup.  I'm doing the same thing.
I have 2 trackballs on my panel though, so I'm just putting a DPDT switch on my panel to select between trackball 1 X axis and the spinner.

[_Iz-]

I did the dpdt thing too for spinner/trackball on 1 mouse hack. works great!

[seaner]

I did the dpdt thing too for spinner/trackball on 1 mouse hack. works great!

Hey Iz,
Do you only have one trackball or 2?  I'm trying to decide whether I should do this on the primary or secondary.. I have a feeling games like tron, arkanoid, etc. only support input from the primary control.  It would just be nice to leave player 2 trackball switched to spinner unless playing 2 player marble madness or something.

[MrBond]

Can't I just wire the trackball and spinner to the same mouse?

Also, I'm going to just tighten a nut down really tight on the shaft to hold the gear in place.

[seaner]

Can't I just wire the trackball and spinner to the same mouse?

Also, I'm going to just tighten a nut down really tight on the shaft to hold the gear in place.

you probably can't wire the two directly together (wire-or).  You need to put a switch to select one or the other.. What happens when you knock the spinner by mistake when using the trackball and the spinner drive 0V while the trackball drives 5V?  bad news.  you'd have to make sure the drive circuitry in both devices is open-drain or open-collector with a pullup before attempting something like that.

[MrBond]

you probably can't wire the two directly together (wire-or).  You need to put a switch to select one or the other.. What happens when you knock the spinner by mistake when using the trackball and the spinner drive 0V while the trackball drives 5V?  bad news.  you'd have to make sure the drive circuitry in both devices is open-drain or open-collector with a pullup before attempting something like that.

I didn't think it would be that difficult...hum...how do I make a switch easily?  I was planning on just wiring the spinner to the x-axis of the same mouse I have my t-ball wired to.

[OSCAR]

I put up a page at http://www.oscarcontrols.com/DPDTswitch.shtml to show how to connect a trackball and spinner to a single mouse.

Do you have a pic of your Arkanoid spinner?  There should be a jam nut under the knob that holds the main sleeve in place, and another small nut, probably a #4 or metric equivalent, that holds the primary gear tight.  Most, if not all, Arkanoid spinners were fabricated in Korea and may require metric fasteners.  I've seen a number "original" Arkanoid spinners and they differ quite a bit in their construction.  And to tell the truth, the Happ version is quite a bit higher quality than any of the original ones I've seen.

[MrBond]

Excellent Oscar!  I'll take a look and post if I have any problems/questions