Trackman Marble FX USB conversion anybody?

[Timpanogos Slim]

I was sold on the Trackman Marble FX the second i used the display unit at Comdex 1997.

I went through two or three of 'em. Loved 'em. They were particularly great at work, where they were like kryptonite for anyone who tried to use my computer. People would recoil like they'd touched something revolting.

And then i built a computer with a motherboard that turned out to be trying to do some kind of super smart something with PS/2 devices - I disremember what. It was nonsense, and it only supported the standard PS/2 and Intellimouse protocols, not PS2++ aka MouseMan+. So I lost a button, plus it was generally unreliable.

I went to FutureShop and pulled a Trackball Explorer 1.0 out of the clearance bin for $50. It was acceptable after i figured out how to remap but buttons, and then a while later i replaced it with a Cordless Optical Trackman, and then that with another. Which i am still using.

So you could say that I'm dedicated to having a large trackball at an angle where i can drive it with 2-3 fingers as needed. Shame they haven't made any in almost 15 years.

Over the last 20 years, I've gotten a lot better with a soldering iron. Over the last weekend, i revived one of my old FX trackmen by fluxing and re-flowing the pins of the mcu on the main board. Left and right button switches are intermittent so i'll be replacing those this weekend. It's a little annoying that though there are numerous people selling mouse switches on ebay and aliexpress i don't know what pressure rating for the switch I'm looking for and they aren't saying what they are supplying, but I suppose any click that works reliably is good enough.

So I came across this arduino sketch:

https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=365472.0

Use an ATMega32U4 based Arduino or similar to convert the FX to a USB HID mouse. His code uses the red button to scroll with the ball.

Some of the 32U4 modules are small enough that they might fit inside the FX, above the main board. Like this one: https://goo.gl/n0ctfZ

And this one: https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1075.html

I've got some 5v Arduino Pro Mini boards and a PS/2 jack on the end of a cable, so it should be easy for me to set up to test the code here.

The comments say the code is "very hack" but I don't see anything wrong? then again I am a novice coder. It uses the official arduino HID library, rather than the HID+ library. I'm not sure if that matters.

So far I've only used my rebuilt FX on a Windows 7 system, and it looks like i am down a mouse button, with the red button doing nothing and the middle button doing scroll duty. Does Setpoint do anything with these?

Going to USB HID will make things easier all around, I think. If a suitable microswitch can be found, it should be possible to make the "red button to scroll" feature settable.

Anyone else mess around with this? A bunch of people have downloaded that sketch but there are no comments.

[torrent99]

Just looked at that, unfortunately whilst I can see how it interfaces the PS2 mouse to the arduino, I can't see how it's making the arduino pretend it's a USB mouse to the PC..

[Timpanogos Slim]

Just looked at that, unfortunately whilst I can see how it interfaces the PS2 mouse to the arduino, I can't see how it's making the arduino pretend it's a USB mouse to the PC..

The ability to natively connect to usb as HID is a native feature of the 32U4. In fact the comments in the code list it as a concern, since you can't program it when it's in that mode. makes debugging more fiddly.

I haven't gone anywhere with this project. Got modules but haven't dug in yet. Did find my third marble FX today though.

[0100010]

I also use a Trackman FX mouse in PS2.  To get back the scroll button, I use X-Mouse.

[Kavik]

I'd never heard of the Trackman Marble FX. The shape is certainly intriguing.

Is there something special about this mouse that prevents the use of a commercial PS/2 to USB converter? Model M users often use this guy (I've tested one with good results myself): https://www.amazon.com/Sewell-Active-Adapter-Keyboard-Mouse/dp/B008J56RVY/ref=pd_sim_147_7?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B008J56RVY&pd_rd_r=3T2CASHM6CGM8N21EV58&pd_rd_w=x5u9f&pd_rd_wg=qgwVg&psc=1&refRID=3T2CASHM6CGM8N21EV58

I've never messed with arduino or anything of this nature, so maybe it's so far over my head that I misunderstood.

[Timpanogos Slim]

I'd never heard of the Trackman Marble FX. The shape is certainly intriguing.

Is there something special about this mouse that prevents the use of a commercial PS/2 to USB converter? Model M users often use this guy (I've tested one with good results myself): https://www.amazon.com/Sewell-Active-Adapter-Keyboard-Mouse/dp/B008J56RVY/ref=pd_sim_147_7?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B008J56RVY&pd_rd_r=3T2CASHM6CGM8N21EV58&pd_rd_w=x5u9f&pd_rd_wg=qgwVg&psc=1&refRID=3T2CASHM6CGM8N21EV58

I've never messed with arduino or anything of this nature, so maybe it's so far over my head that I misunderstood.

I forget the precise details - it was more than 10 years ago that i last tangled with the situation. I had a motherboard that had some kind of "smart" ps2 port that tried to make it appear to the operating system as a usb HID device or some crazy nonsense. At any rate, it was trying to figure out what protocol the ps2 mouse was using in order to read that data and convert it to something, and this required that the ps2 mouse data it presented to the operating system was translated to something else and then back into ps2. Their support response to the fact that it didn't work very well boiled down to "use a usb mouse".

The basic issue is that there are actually a handfull of ps2 mouse protocols. In linux xwindows, what i was using at the time, there was ps/2, imps/2, explorerps/2, thinkingmouseps/2, mousemanplusps/2, glidepointps/2, netmouseps/2, and netscrollps/2. I vaguely recall that the motherboard's ps/2 port didn't work properly unless the mouse used the intellimouse protocol, while the fx uses MouseMan Plus.

I bought about 4 different USB to PS/2 conversion dongles that did not turn out to work properly - they would initialize the FX with the regular ps2 protocol and some of the buttons would be nonfunctional. I heard that there were specific models that worked, but somehow did not find them. eBay and Amazon weren't as exhaustive 12 years ago. In a fit of frustration i went to Best Buy and found a Microsoft Trackball Explorer on the closeout table for $50 and used that with the problematic computer.