Rotate Happ Trackball axis 90 degrees

[mikeyv23]

Hey All,

I just finished my control panel, hooked everything up and noticed that my Happ USB trackball is rotated 90 degrees to the right.  Due to how my cp is cut, I cannot just turn it around without having to basically start from scratch and build a whole new one.

Does anyone know if the Happ 3" USB Trackballs can be opened and modified (easily) to accommodate for this?  I didn't know if I could just swap some wires or something.  I am running this with a PC with Ubuntu 9.10 installed.  I wasn't sure if there was a way I could change this on the OS/software end (maybe in xorg?) as another option.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[SirPeale]

I think you can just swap the encoder boards.  Won't hurt anything to try.

[mikeyv23]

Well swapping the encoder boards got me half way there!!  Right and left are corrected now.  Up and down are now reversed though.  I tried to rotate the up/down encoder board to get the correct up/down position, but the components do not line up correctly.  I cannot see any way to fix this right now at least through the hardware angle.  This is MUCH better, but I would love to find a way to get it 100%.  Thanks again to SirPeale!!    Any other ideas?   

[csa3d]

i did a similar mistake on my trackball, i ended up swapping the boards then snipping the wires attatched them and swapping them.

-csa

[bkenobi]

Depending on what OS you are using, you can fix this in software.  Windows has a utility that allows you to select the direction you want the mouse to use as up.  If the mouse is working correctly with the axis simply rotated, you should have no problem getting this working in Windows.

As for MAME, I don't see why you would have any issues at all.  MAME lets you map which axis is used for what.  So, just map the trackball manually rather than using the built in mapping.  Make Up/Down work with the X axis and Left/Right with the Y axis.  Done.

[SirPeale]

i did a similar mistake on my trackball, i ended up swapping the boards then snipping the wires attatched them and swapping them.

-csa

Why didn't you just pop the pins out of the Molex connector and pop them back in?

Which is the next thing I was going to suggest to the OP.

[csa3d]

i did a similar mistake on my trackball, i ended up swapping the boards then snipping the wires attatched them and swapping them.

-csa

Why didn't you just pop the pins out of the Molex connector and pop them back in?

Which is the next thing I was going to suggest to the OP.

That probably would have felt less destructive!  Swap the molex pins instead of performing wire surgery and your problem should be resolved.
-csa

[mikeyv23]

I ended up recutting the trackball mount area of my control panel.  I didn't have to redo the whole thing, and in the end I guess it was easier.  Thanks for the suggestions!