A ball mouse and a trackball use the same technology: an optical transmitter aimed at an optical sensor, with the light path occluded intermittently by a wheel with holes in it, which in turn is moved by the ball.
I read
an article in which a hacker replaces a trackball's physical optics with a laser mouse controller board. However, that project requires the translucent trackball to be sanded to provide the laser with a proper tracking surface. However, I don't want to sand down my trackball: i like it's glassy translucent appearance better than the scuffed.
Therefore I tried to mod a PS/2 mouse board by removing its optical semiconductors and wiring the pads to the optical sensors of the trackball, planning to follow through by wiring the mouse button pads to the trackball micro-switches. In theory, this should have been a simple replacement. However, the first test didn't work.
Is there a geekhacker with enough knowledge of ball-mouse optics to say whether mouse optics are commodity parts, such that one could swap optics between devices, or do I have to solder the original optics from the mouse onto the trackball frame because they are obviously not interchangeable?
