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Trackbox controller?
hey dude,did you find the supply current of the infra-red led's?,they can be easily powered from the 5.6v point on the controller,you will have to find the perfect resistor for the job,as even a little too much current going to the infra red-led will mess with the resistance and make the thing go crazy,thanks for mentioning my name btw XD I feel all warm and fuzzy inside!heres how the trackball works:when the trackball is stationary,the infra red light from the led is shining through a gear with many small slits,when you are moving the trackball in one direction the gear moves,the slits moving dampen light shining through the gear,meaning the resistance drops,when you stop moving the stick,the resistance goes back up,this is what gives it the ability to roll,unlike the psp analog stick it can reset the resistance without actually centering as the psp analog does.I have not described how the mechanism discrimates between direction on an axis,kink you will need to pm me about this as it is vital to avoid the mixing up of the axis',i'vedrawn up a diagram to show youryan0
the PIC would only be needed for the optical trackball,i dont think ill need it for this one...yet. thanks ryan, youve been a big help in this.upon further inspection of the controller, im going to have to cut out a couple parts of the plastic. i may also lose the black and white buttons. thats only a problem for the prototype though the final controller has relocated black and white buttons.
This is a cool idea, but unless I am mistaken about what you are planning, it will definitely require some additional hardware to read the pulse frequency from the photo-transistors, and translate that into an appropriate analog signal to feed the ADCs in the controller. Opto-mechanical mice do not operate on resistance like a joystick, but use rotary encoders to create electrical pulses which correspond to movements on each axis. There was a third party device for the Xbox and Ps2 called the SmartJoy Frag which did something similar to this. It was designed for first-person perspective games and allowed an ordinary mouse and keyboard (PS2 or USB) to be connected in place of the standard controller. It worked a bit differently in that replacing the controller entirely allowed for movement input to be digital, without having to trick the ADCs normally used for joystick input. If you can find one of these you might want to try it out with a trackball mouse.
the phototransitor wont conflict with the analog signal... i dont think because when i did that virtual reality thing(to lazy to finsh) it didnt effect it at all