You guys got me thinking…still, the time of action will be coming in a couple of days with boards aplenty from Mike.
I’ve been looking at the joystick problem - that they are expensive and how to come up with something cheaper. I like the idea of 2 axis control and my first box is going to contain 2 joysticks from an old radio control unit.
Now to the point. I’ve got an old MS Mouse here with the cover off, and I think it will stand being turned upsidedown and being used as a tracker ball. It seems to move smoothly with it’s weight on the rollers.
By drilling into the ball and screwing a shaft into it you have a joystick. Now I know it won’t be an analogue type, it will essentially be a two-axis encoder.
So what? Well, if another roller and led pair are used, it can be mounted at 90 degrees to the other two. So by rotating the joystick shaft you’ll get a endless 36 tick or so encoder. (i.e. x and y axis as per standard mouse setup, then another one on a z axis).
So you’ll have a 1 handed 3 dimenional encoder control :D
I’ve not started my Midibox yet, so the only thing I’m not sure of is how encoder use will map on to my synths. But I’m really interested to give it a go. Will post some details when I do.
To allow maximum joystick range, half of the mouse ball will need to be exposed, which means it can pop out. I was thinking of mounting a magnet underneath, just to give it a bit more “stick” if the midibox is moved. Is this a bad idea for any of the electronics?
d2k, was the stuff inside your mouse ball steel? This one feels really heavy, but I can’t find a magnet anywhere (and I’m not going to start taking apart my monitors ;)
Ye, it was metal inside - dont know what, but i imagin steel…
BTW: i gave up on these encoders - too much time, hassle and i didnt have enough room in my LC box to include them - besides, the deal Ian got for those encoders was too good to miss
The pics are not available anymore in this thread. Is this a mistake or did you take em off out of purpose? Would it be possible, that you make 'em available again, since I’m very interresed to learn from your work?
ye soz, pics got dashed - never continued with this project as (..i remember - was a while bak) I couldnt get it workin when I desolderd the components from the mouse and made up new brds - got messy and I was even more of an amature then ;p…neways it was lotta work and whats the point of that when u can get encoders for so cheap! chek smashs’ site - he’s knockin em out for a nugget!
But those I will use for the V-Pods. The optical thing from the mouse parts would be nice for the jog-wheel, since I can control the mechanical resistence.
So I will make the next try and hope to get it working. Since I have logitech mice as well, having the pix would help me finding out, which pin to connect to what :-/
