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Author Topic: Need help building a custom trackball  (Read 5065 times)

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Offline SDRiding

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Need help building a custom trackball
« on: Wed, 28 October 2009, 19:52:32 »
Love the site here, I just recently stumbled across and it seems to have a collection of great minds!

I'm trying to outfit an XBox 360 controller with a custom trackball in place of the right analog stick. My thoughts were to build a custom trackball using an optical or laser mouse (The Sidewinder and Lachesis hack are great!) for the positioning and then using a PIC to translate the digital movement of the mouse into the analog signal that would be generated by the Joystick. A simple distance to Speed(effectively a state of the potentiometer) + Time calculation is what I'm thinking would would work in the PIC.

I'd like to find out what's a good way to breakdown an optical mouse, remove all the extraneous parts of the PCB so I can get the movement positions input to the PIC. The smaller the device the better! I'm pretty sure an 800 DPI optical mouse would give good enough accuracy for this.

So I'm hoping one of you has some insight on how this could be done, or to find out if I'm completely off!

Thanks in advance!

Edit: Found this little guy on Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826146007
Seems like a good candidate for this project.
« Last Edit: Wed, 28 October 2009, 23:52:09 by SDRiding »
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Offline chimera15

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Need help building a custom trackball
« Reply #1 on: Sat, 31 October 2009, 10:14:26 »
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Alps boards:
white real complicated: 1x modified siiig minitouch kb1903,  hhkb light2 english steampunk hack, wireless siig minitouch hack
white with rubber damper(cream)+clicky springs: 2x modified siig minitouch kb1903 1x modified siig minitouch kb1948
white fake simplified:   1x white smk-85, 1x Steampunk compact board hack
white real simplified: 1x unitek k-258
low profile: 1x mint m1242 in box
black: ultra mini wrist keyboard hack
blue: Japanese hhk2 lite hack, 1x siig minitouch pcb/doubleshot dc-2014 caps. kb1903, 1x modified kb1948 Siig minitouch
rainbow test boards:  mck-84sx

Offline microsoft windows

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Need help building a custom trackball
« Reply #2 on: Sat, 31 October 2009, 12:38:44 »
I don't have much experience on building trackballs, but it might be good to consider rigging up an old trackball, since it's got the mechanism already in place.
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Offline SDRiding

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Need help building a custom trackball
« Reply #3 on: Sun, 01 November 2009, 23:15:17 »
Well it's not for an XBox at all, I'm using it as a custom controller for my HTPC. Doing it mostly for fun. Was hoping someone who's familiar with pointing devices would know of a couple that don't have a "mouse-on-a-chip" setup, where the USB and sensor reading PICs are separate.
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Offline chimera15

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Need help building a custom trackball
« Reply #4 on: Sun, 01 November 2009, 23:55:14 »
Quote from: SDRiding;129848
Well it's not for an XBox at all, I'm using it as a custom controller for my HTPC. Doing it mostly for fun. Was hoping someone who's familiar with pointing devices would know of a couple that don't have a "mouse-on-a-chip" setup, where the USB and sensor reading PICs are separate.

Well it should be easy enough to strip a mouse of extraneous buttons and the circuits related to them, but the problem is going to be interfacing the sensor and deciphering the signals and everything.  That's beyond anything I've done.  I'd be really interested to see what you do if you do do it.  I've always wanted to learn more about how the chips of a mouse interface with a computer.

Yeah I'd probably pick a small cheap travel mouse, and trace the circuits, and go at it with a de-soldering iron.

You also might just want to try something like this :

http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-Dolphin-Hand-held-Trackball-Buttons-mice-K185_W0QQitemZ280379596394QQcmdZViewItemQQptZMice?hash=item4147ed1e6a

http://cgi.ebay.com/Aoc-Finger-Hand-Held-4D-Usb-Mini-Trackball-Mouse_W0QQitemZ130340842853QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item1e58eb6d65
They also have controllers for htpc's with trackballs built in:

Just an example, there are lots of them:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Targus-wireless-Trackball-HTPC-MULTIMEDIA-PRESENTER_W0QQitemZ330332748176QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item4ce95db990
« Last Edit: Mon, 02 November 2009, 00:06:03 by chimera15 »
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Alps boards:
white real complicated: 1x modified siiig minitouch kb1903,  hhkb light2 english steampunk hack, wireless siig minitouch hack
white with rubber damper(cream)+clicky springs: 2x modified siig minitouch kb1903 1x modified siig minitouch kb1948
white fake simplified:   1x white smk-85, 1x Steampunk compact board hack
white real simplified: 1x unitek k-258
low profile: 1x mint m1242 in box
black: ultra mini wrist keyboard hack
blue: Japanese hhk2 lite hack, 1x siig minitouch pcb/doubleshot dc-2014 caps. kb1903, 1x modified kb1948 Siig minitouch
rainbow test boards:  mck-84sx

Offline SDRiding

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  • Posts: 3
Need help building a custom trackball
« Reply #5 on: Mon, 02 November 2009, 22:41:25 »
Wouldn't the accuracy of those be pretty low? The only reason I was thinking of using mouse vs trackball guts is that trackballs are unfortunately overlooked and tend to be a little behind. And your hacks of the sidewinder and lachesi made me think it could be done.

Actually if you do a search on using optical mice in robotics there are alot of great articles on how to interface with the output from them. It's pretty standardized since most of them use the same chip manufacturer, just different packaging. The one problem I see is that it may be harder to interface with one that has the USB encoding built into the sensor reading chip, it's harder to use those apparently.

I'll keep you updated as I proceed with it! Thanks for the tips, if you have any other ideas I'll be watching the forums. I'm really doing this for the fun, learning experience of it; so a store bought solution wouldn't provide that part :P
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