Posted by Druin on 8, 2001 at 11:15 PM:
In Reply to: Re: More on axis selection and multiple spinners posted by OSCAR on 8, 2001 at 10:37 PM:
Have you looked into the other available spinner products being sold and do you know how they are set up, are they locked in one axis or can they be switched and chained possibly to get the same 2 port 4 axis optimization that OSCAR will have?
The reason I wonder all this is I'm wondering if there's any urgency for me to make a digital mouse adapter to allow merging of this sort...in the case of the OSCAR there is going to be no need for such a device, but for people who have the other spinner(s), if they are stuck with a single spinner using up a full port, they would maybe like the option to merge multiple axes down to optimized port usage...
So if they had 2 spinners both set for X axis only, they could plug it into this device and have one continue being the X axis, but have the other spinner's X axis be routed to the Y axis of the same port....etc.
I could still think of an excuse to build such an interface, for instance port sharing just like the hagstrom trackball/spinner device does..if it is desired to not have to swap cables or use an extra port just for trackball and spinner sharing, this interface would be like an auto-port switcher, but even better than port sharing like Stephen Hans' site has, where it just detects which device is being used and then fully switches over to it after a preset activity verification delay...this would truly (ideally) allow spinners and trackballs to be used at the same time....so if you moved a spinner one direction and moved the trackball the opposite way, the net result would register a cancellation...just to have the ultimate serial/ps2 port sharing interface. I think I'll work on it in spare time. I already have a lot of the basic hardware and micro controller programming done because I was working on the Ps/2 keyboard before, and it's the exact same circuit and same timing of data packets as the mouse, so I just have to change a little logic and I have a mouse instead of a keyboard emulator on my circuit board...