Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: MostTornBrain on September 25, 2004, 11:17:11 am
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Has anyone ever seen a problem like this? I have an Opti-Pac board and I'm trying interface it with two Happ optical sensor boards (A052-1011-00). These Happ boards are the ones used with the Happ trackball and rotational joystick. In my case, I'm wiring two Happ optical rotating joysticks.
The problem I am having is after wiring it, I only see very very small movement when the sensor wheel is rotated and only in one direction. For example, if I wire the sensor to the X-axis, the mouse will move to the left very very slowly, but will not move to the right at all.
I have tested two other optical controls (an Oscar spinner and an Ultimarc trackball) and those controls work fine with the Opti-Pac. It is only the two Happ optical controls that exhibiit this odd behavior.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Brian
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Some follow-up information:
I've tested the pin-outs per the troubleshooting section on the bottom of the Opti-pac web page (http://www.ultimarc.com/optipac3.html) and the Happ output is definitely different than the output from another vendor's spinner or trackball.
Using a voltmeter, I could see on an Oscar spinner that the two outputs varied between 0 and 4.5 volts as the spinner was turned (and the second output would be somewhat the opposing value - e.g. one would read 3.7 and the other would read 1.2 or vise versa).
On the Happ optical board, one output would constantly read close to 0 volts and the other would hold 4.5v high and would temporarily drop to 0 volts as the sensor wheel turned. It would never stay at 0 volts - it was just an temporary change and would then jump back to 4.5 volts even though the wheel was not moving.
I ended up using a voltmeter to measure values on the pins coming directly off the optical sensor component on the Happ board and these were showing the expected voltage ranges as the wheel was turned, so I ended up just directly soldering the output wires to these pins on the sensor and connected them to the Opti-Pac. I then jumpered the Opti-Pac to use "Active HI" on the rotary inputs and everything now works ok.
It seems a bit odd I had to do this. Is the Happ board A052-0111-00 not directly compatible with the Opti-Pac? From what I've read, other people just wire the Happ board to the Opti-Pac and it all works with no problems.
The Happ board has a lot more components than the optical sensor boards used with my Oscar spinner and Ultimarc trackball, so I assume it must be sending out a different signal for a reason.
Brian
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The optipac/happ encoder combination works fine for most people. I have two optical rotaries and a Happ trackball hooked to mine with no problem. I did have some movement problems initially with the rotaries, but that was because the board had shifted slightly in shipping and was not registering. It behaved similar to the movements you describe.
Does the trackball exhibit that same type of behavior?
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No, the trachball works fine, but it isn't using th eHapp board. It is a trackball from Ultimarc.
It's definitely something weird with my two Happ rotational joysticks - both behave identically.
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No, happs boards (the old green olds you have and the newer red ones) send out the standard "quadrature" signals: 10 <-> 00 <-> 01 <-> 11 <-> (repeat 10). Just like you saw on your multimeter when you read straight from the sensors.
All that extra circuitry is to prevent bounce and other reading problems, and probably square the waves more sharply. Stuff the Optipac can handle that stuff on its own, wiring direct should be okay.
More likely the chip is burnt, or the wiring into or out of the chip is shorted. (Poorly packed and dropped during shipping, maybe?)
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Bingo!! We have a winner! Thank you for your insight, Rebel! When you mentioned a short, I decided to look over the board again. It is mounted on a metal bracket in the rotational joystick assembly provided by Happ. One of the surface-mount resistors was making contact with the edge of the metal bracket. It looks like the holes for the screws are out of alignment. Funny thing is, both my joysticks have this same problem.
As a quick test, I removed the board from the metal bracket and it all works perfectly! I'll just put some nylon washers between the board and the metal bracket and that should take care of the short.
Thanks again! This problem had been driving me nuts.
Now I can go to sleep. :-)