Arcade Trackball Mouse Hack
Step 5: Identifying Connection / Hack Points
The connection
points need to be identified on the RX (receiver) solder points. In my
case each of the receivers had hooked into 4 solder pads. I was able
to trace two of these to power & ground. The remaining two were
then identified as the 2 phases for each receiver. The only thing I
tapped into on one of the transmitter solder pads was +5v for power, but
this could have been tapped into anywhere on the board.
Your
mouse circuit board will likely look different. If your receiver (RX)
solder points only have 3 solder pads, then two of those pads should be
for the phases and the remaining is likely power. You can identify this
by following the traces from the solder pads. If they lead to the
microcontroller IC, they should be the phases and remaining point(s) are
power/ground. You can also use your multimeter on the ohm or
continuity setting to verify the remaining solder pad(s).
Picture: Connection points for trackball wires
Step 6: Wiring It Up
You
have a few options here. You can cut the molex connector off of the
wire harness of the trackball and solder the trackball's wires directly
to the mouse board. Another option if you want to preserve the
trackball connector is to create your own wire harness for the mouse
circuit board. That's the option I took. The parts don't cost a lot
but there is a special crimp tool needed for the molex pins that can run
you an additional $15-20 if you don't already have one. So depending
on how much you care about not preserving the original molex connector
on the trackball you can decide if it's worth spending the extra money
to create a mating harness for the mouse circuit board.
Below is a
picture of a molex pin crimped onto a wire hooked into the mouse.
Again this step is optional if you want to preserve the connector on the
trackball itself.
Picture: Female 0.093" molex pin crimped onto wires from the mouse
Picture: Horizontal phases, Vertical phases, +5v and GND wired
In
the picture above, wires have been soldered onto the two horizontal
phase inputs, the two vertical phase inputs, +5v on the board and a GND
solder point on the back of the board. Don't pay attention to the wire
colors if you've cut the trackball's molex connector off and are soldering the trackball's wires directly to the mouse. My wire colors are for the custom wire harness I built (see wire references below).
Once all of
the wires were soldered to the board & molex pins attached, I pushed
the pins into the new molex receptacle (part 03-09-1061).. first
matching the power and GND up with the trackball's power and GND
locations on the male connector. Then "guessing" the wires for the
horizontal and vertical phases and inserting those pins into the
receptacle. If you cut the molex connector off the trackball, your
wires would be directly soldered to the mouse circuit board. If you get
the two horizontal (or vertical) phases mixed up, moving left or right
will just be backwards of what it should be & you can reverse the
wires.
My Betson Trackball has these wire colors:
Red = +5v
Black = GND
Yellow = Horizontal Phase 1
Green = Horizontal Phase 2
Brown = Vertical Phase 1
Blue = Vertical Phase 2
Note: Your trackball may differ so best to Google for the pinouts
The wire harness going into the mouse has these wire colors:
Orange = +5v (hooks to red wire on trackball)
Black = GND (hooks to black wire on trackball)
Brown = Horizontal Phase 1 (hooks to yellow wire on trackball)
Green = Horizontal Phase 2 (hooks to green wire on trackball)
Blue = Vertical Phase 1 (hooks to brown wire on trackball)
White = Vertical Phase 2 (hooks to blue wire on trackball)
Step 7: Finishing & Testing
I verified the pin
connections with the continuity test on my multimeter. Best to do this
to find any shorts and verify connections before hooking it up to an
expensive computer. Once I was reasonably sure the connections were
correct, I connected the PS/2 cable to the computer. At first, it
didn't work -- but that's where Murphy's law came in. After testing
with my multimeter I realized I wasn't getting +5v power to the
trackball and found the +5v wasn't connected to the mouse at the right
solder point. Once that was connected, the trackball worked -- but then
would stop working. Turns out that the ground wire I soldered onto the
mouse had bad spot in the wire (broken connection).. so I had to rewire
the ground wire. I also had to switch the horizontal phase wires since
moving the trackball left would make the mouse cursor go right &
vice-versa.
Conclusion / To Do
The completed
trackball hack is shown below & it works! I can move the computer's
mouse cursor with the trackball. What I should probably do is put the
circuit board into a small "project case" available from radio shack..
or back into the mouse case it came out of so that it's protected and
looks nicer. Something else you could do as I mentioned is solder wires
to the button connections on the mouse circuit board so that you could
put the buttons anywhere you'd like. Just depends if you truly want to
use it as a mouse or just want to remap some other buttons in MAME, etc.
Now
the hard part is going to be figuring out how to modify the current
control panel or build a new control panel so I can fit this into a
machine. My current control panel has no room for a large arcade
trackball.. so it seems I've created another project for myself,
especially if the wife gets into playing any games that use the
trackball!
Picture: Finished trackball to mouse hack
Resources
Here's some other great links on the subject:
http://www.slashdev.ca/arcade-trackball/
http://www.willcoxonline.com/mame/controlpanel/controlpanel.htm
http://members.shaw.ca/bakaye/tballhack.htm
http://dacab.datplace.com/MouseHack.htm
Comments:
RE: Where can I buy a hacked mouse |
Posted 08/17/11 4:44PM by AceBHound |
You might be interested in an "OptiPac" from Ultimarc for around $39. That would allow you to hook up your arcade trackball wires directly to the terminal block connections on the OptiPac and if your trackball had a slightly different wiring configuration you'd be able to swap wires easily. |
Where can I buy a hacked mouse |
Posted 08/13/11 8:39AM by Anonymous Techdoser |
Where can I purchase a pre-hacked mouse? |