My attempt at a cheap mouse hack spinner

[BadMouth]

Thought I'd try my hand at a home built spinner (this is BUILD your own arcade controls).
It didn't turn out perfect, but I think I'm on to something with a few new ideas.

The basic ideas are from the mouse hack spinner builds here in the controls section of byoac.
I set about doing something similar, but wanted it to fit in a button housing.
This is more of a summary than a how-to.  If you want exact measurements, etc, there are detailed instructions in the controls section.

I chose shower door rollers for bearings because they were a near perfect fit for the button housing.
The 4-pack came with two 7/8" rollers and two 3/4" rollers.
The 7/8" roller sits on a ledge just inside the button and the 3/4" fits all the way in.

The rollers are threaded for a #8 bolt, so that led to using that size rod as the shaft.
That also happens to be the standard thread size for cabinet knobs.  They had a couple heavy
knobs that would have made decent spinner knobs on their own, but they were all around $15.
I chose a basic knob with a straight base that would work more as a cap than as the entire spinner.

Parts bought:

4-pack shower door rollers               $3.47
#8-32 x 12" threaded rod                 $ .98
bag of #8-32 nuts                          $ .98   
cabinet knob                                 $1.18
caster wheel                                 $1.74
-------------------------------------------------
                                                  $8.35


Also used:

Old rollerball mouse
Happ Button housing
Plastic Epoxy
Loc-tite
Piece of thin scrap metal to bend bracket out of

I'm not going to get into the specifics of everything, but a couple pointers...

The rollers don't spin very freely with the heavy grease they come with.  One of the articles I read said to use WD-40, but
it evaporates, so I used PB Blaster.  The basic idea is to displace the heavy grease with a lighter lubricant.
Keep the nut side down when assembling everything.  They spin more freely in that position.

USE LOC-TITE!  The spinner will spin itself a part if the rod rotates in the threads instead of turning the rollers!

Make sure the rod is straight before you start.  This is where mine fell short.  I assumed the rod was perfectly straight.
I assumed wrong and didn't find that it had a slight bend until things were already epoxied in place.  It still works, but isn't
as good as it could have been.








the rollers are epoxied in place. smaller roller is set even with the back of the button.
To attach the optical wheel from the mouse, I placed some heat shrink tubing on the end, put some epoxy in it,
put the wheel in place, then shrank the tubing while the epoxy was still liquid.  You can make any needed adjustments
as the epoxy sets.  My wheel ended up perfectly parallel to everything, but has a little lateral movement due to the part
of the rod I used being slightly bent.

[BadMouth]

The bracket to hold the mouse parts is held in place by the button.

The thing ended up being waaaay too deep.  If I actually use this, it will be on a bartop.
If I had it to do over again, I would have cut the button shorter and shortened the shaft
going to the optical wheel.  I ended up cutting off part of the mouse pcb that contained some of the buttons, so I could
flip it upside down to save space.  Basically, I just kept hacking the mouse housing and pcb until it fit around the button.
Then I epoxied the pcb in place in what was left of the housing.

Then it came time to attach this to the bracket and that's when the issue of the shaft not being perfectly aligned really
killed what could have been a quality build.  I ended up attaching one side with duct tape to act as a hinge so the whole
housing could float and keep the optical wheel aligned.  Nothing is going to fall apart.  The end of the optical wheel is
snapped into the mouse housing and it can't go anywhere because it's resting against the bracket.



It works great.  It could be more solid and professional looking, but I only spent $10 and learned a lot.
I'm not sure I'll try it again without some type of equipment to make sure everything is aligned.
I'm thinking that an optical wheel printed on inkjet transparency held onto the end with nuts might be easier
to align than trying to glue the mouse wheel on the end.


Tomorrow...maybe I'll go for my first pad hack!!!

[drventure]

Very cool!

I give it 5 McGuyvers!

[leapinlew]

I built some controls for my driving cabinet. Overall, it worked fine. Since then, I've used several spinners from GGG. When factoring in the time spent and everything - I'll buy my spinners from now on.

Looks good - nice job. I think it's a necessity to build some controls, and this spinner looks good.

[DaOld Man]

I agree, nice job.
I think we all should try to build our own controls, if nothing else than for the learning experience. You really learn how the control works.
But lew does have a point about being easier to buy instead of build.

[danny_galaga]

Nice work (",)

[Blanka]

I give it 5 McGuyvers!

Yeah, it even has DUCK-TAPE woot!