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Spinner with Encoder wheels

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D_Harris:
Are there any spinners on the market with easily swappable encoder wheels that make a mouse hack easy? Or is it common practice to make your own encoder wheels?

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

D_Harris:
Ok, I guess not.

But is seems to me that there would have been a market for an encoder wheel kit consisting of a variety of encoder wheels (and even with optics so a mouse wouldn't be needed), so that one could use any arcade spinner, as opposed to having to buy one of the "MAME" spinners or undertake the task of building one.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

u_rebelscum:
Hacking mice used to be more common, before the optiwiz and other cheap encoders came out.  So the demand for "print your own encoder wheel" software also was higher (I can't google the one I knew about, though).

The print software is way more flexible than kits can be.  You get to pick your diameter and number of gaps.  And you can text different combos to match your sensors.  All you need is a printer and a clear paper to print on.

D_Harris:

--- Quote from: u_rebelscum on February 01, 2010, 03:05:50 pm ---Hacking mice used to be more common, before the optiwiz and other cheap encoders came out.
--- End quote ---

That's just it. There doesn't seem to be much of an advantage over a mouse. The Opti-Wiz doesn't support more buttons than a conventional mouse.


--- Quote ---So the demand for "print your own encoder wheel" software also was higher (I can't google the one I knew about, though).
--- End quote ---

But since you still need a spinner with the Opti-Wiz as you would with a mouse pcb, I again don't see the advantage.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

u_rebelscum:

--- Quote from: D_Harris on February 01, 2010, 09:42:30 pm ---
--- Quote from: u_rebelscum on February 01, 2010, 03:05:50 pm ---Hacking mice used to be more common, before the optiwiz and other cheap encoders came out.
--- End quote ---

That's just it. There doesn't seem to be much of an advantage over a mouse. The Opti-Wiz doesn't support more buttons than a conventional mouse.


--- Quote ---So the demand for "print your own encoder wheel" software also was higher (I can't google the one I knew about, though).
--- End quote ---

But since you still need a spinner with the Opti-Wiz as you would with a mouse pcb, I again don't see the advantage.

--- End quote ---

I'm not saying hacking is wrong or you shouldn't do it, just the fact that the number of people hacking mice has dropped drastically since I started into this field.  (Hacking mice used to be a way more common topic here 5 years ago.)  I'm guessing there are two major reasons that the optiwiz/optipac/u-hid/other optical encoder now are more popular are: the encoders are easier, and most mice don't use wheels anymore.

"Open" spinners, with the encoder wheel visible, were very common until the "closed" tt2/spintrak/tt-hl/spintrak2 came out and mostly pushed the open ones off the board.  You might be able to replace the wheels on the open spinners.  Tornado (AFAIK) is the only one still in production (I thought the blackhawk was too, but its website is down, and its not showing on google anymore).


But my point of my first post was that the demand for kits of optical encoder wheels is very small, partially due to that there are ways to make (print) you own. 

As for "encoder wheel kits", GGG has one booster kit for arcade trackballs; I don't know of any other simular kits (to GGG's or your suggested ones) out there (besides replacement, same as OEM, sets).

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