Posted by Kyol on 6, 2001 at 3:13 PM:
So, trying to avoid the whole PS/2 or Serial issue, I was wondering if anyone had tried a USB mouse as the basis for a spinner hack. I'm currently thinking:
- I-PAC USB
- USB mouse hacked into a spinner
-Cheap (self powered?) USB hub so I only have 1 USB connection hanging out of my control box. (The Cube is seriously short of USB ports, and the PC's USB port is buried on the back of the case.)
That way I could plug the control box into either my PC (main machine) or my Mac G4 Cube (living room computer) without worrying about adaptors or dongles or anything. I know the I-PAC will work with either the PC or the Cube - it acts like a USB Keyboard. But has anyone tried hacking a USB mouse? I'm figurring they're the same guts on the inside, just with a different interface encoder.
(Actually, the idea of spinning an image past an _optical_ USB mouse has some intrigue. Rip it ouf of the case, align the mouse with your spinner's axis of rotation, call it a day. :)