Possible to hack a USB mouse as a trackball?

bones3010

Member
Joined
Mar 22, 2008
Messages
574
Reaction score
3
Location
Connecticut
While brainstorming for ideas on my microcab design I begin wondering if it was feasible to get a mini trackball running by hacking an old USB mouse I have kicking around. Does anyone know if this could be done to work on one of the 60-in-1 boards that support a trackball, and if so how it's done?

Thanks!

-Rob
 
The biggest problem with mice as trackballs is that when they are flipped over, the ball drops away from the rollers. There used to be some real small travelling trackballs made for laptops that would be perfect.

Kensington still makes one for $29.99 list price: http://us.kensington.com/html/4771.html

I am not sure how you would chop it down to mount it, but it looks good in the pictures.

ken

Edit: Try EBay as well, there were tons of them out there (even ignoring the Blackberry parts). Just search for trackball.
 
Last edited:
As I said, I'm still in the brainstorming phase... I have an actual trackball-style USB mouse miniaturized and only abou the size of a large marble. Figured something dinky like that would be perfect for a microcab but if there's a "real" trackball that's small enough and interfaces with the 60-in-1 then maybe I'll lol in to that afterall.

The CP will only be about 8-10 inches wide (just wide enough for a 7-inch monitor to look proportionate) so the smaller the controls the better...

Thanks for the input.

-Rob
 
While brainstorming for ideas on my microcab design I begin wondering if it was feasible to get a mini trackball running by hacking an old USB mouse I have kicking around. Does anyone know if this could be done to work on one of the 60-in-1 boards that support a trackball, and if so how it's done?

Assuming you're getting enough juice to the optos on the mouse to run the optos on an arcade trackball, it should just be a matter of pulling off the old optos and running wires to the opto board on the trackball...
 
Back
Top Bottom