Arcade Track Ball... lag?

[Ben Klammer]

Me and my dad made a MAME cabinet. Right now, it has two Joysticks, with three buttons each. We made it so you could lift off the controlls and put in other setups. Our second one shall be a trackball.

 

We got a Happ 3" Trackball through Kijiji, in nice enough condition. It came with the arcade sensor things, but we couldn't use 'em. Instead, we got the sensors off an old computer ball mouse.

 

It works, but iff you spinn the ball fast enough (not actually THAT fast), it dosen't pick up. As it slows down, it then starts to pick up the movement. What's up with that? I noticed this happens less with Left/Right, which might be because the light is much ferther back from the sensor wheel there. But it still exsists. Happ makes sensors for the ball that plug in with USB and act like a mouse, however, the only vendor of arcade parts near us only sells the entire track ball. It has both the normal and USB varients, but dosen't sell just the sensors, as far as I know. And while we got the Trackball for $25, that store has the arcade one for $78, and the USB one (BTW it's the same ball but with different electronics) for $166. Quite a bit.

 

Dose anyone know what might be causing this numbness to speed, and how to fix it? Thanks!

[Ataritard]

Why is it that you couldn't use the original sensors that came with the trackball?

[Ben Klammer]

They were made specificly for arcade machines, but we're making a MAME machine. We tried wiring the arcade sensors directly to the sensors on the mouse, but that didn't work at all.

[BigO]

I would guess that maybe the mouse sensors are being spun too fast by the 3" ball. Quadrature type encoders like that can be read by detecting state changes. If the state changes happen faster than the hardware can read/detect them, it could just act like no motion occurred: at least that's what I did on a project where I revived an old, dead trackball by reading the sensors with a microcontroller.

 

It sounds like your dad might know a thing or two about electronics to have attempted something like this. I, too, would probably have tried wiring the arcade sensors directly to the mouse. Any ideas why that didn't work? Did you have the pinouts for everything to know how to wire them in? If so, throw all of the information you have up here and maybe somebody can get you going.

Edited April 11, 2012 by BigO

[Ben Klammer]

Well, we found the pinnout for the cable coming off the trackball, and my dad wired it to the mouse, but.. I dunno. I'll get him to say the whole story when he gets back from work.

[unholy]

Options:

1. tweak mouse sensitivity setting in MAME
   
2. tweak mouse sensitivity settings in Windows control panel
   
3. increase mouse polling rate to 500MHz (google for a tutorial)
   
4. clean an lubricate the rollers in the trackball
   
5. try a different mouse
   
6. if all fails, just get this
   

[Ben Klammer]

I'd atcually rather get the Opti PAC. It's $78 around here, quite expesnive but not deadly so. Not as bad as buying a whole 'nother track ball that's made for USB.

[BigO]

increase mouse polling rate to 500MHz (google for a tutorial)

I didn't know you could do that. My first guess at the source of the problem would very likely be addressed by this. One of the other suggested mouse settings might be worth trying, too, but he didn't seem to indicate that the control was too sensitive or moving too fast when it was working.