While staring at my enclosure this evening (which more and more resembling an arcade/claw game as it takes shape) I had a crazy thought…
“I wonder if I could wire up one of those huge roller balls from the golden tee arcade game, as an x/y jog controller”
Completely pointless and Impractical, but might be a lot of fun if it could be made to work.
Even more fun if it could be used with dynamic speed and direction. Could basically use the router head like a pointer and create freehand art, with x-y controlled by the ball.
Of course there’s a million reasons it wouldn’t work and solving them all is beyond the limits of my dumb monkey brain, but I thought the idea was cool and wanted to put it out into the world in case anyone is up to the challenge of building something silly and fun.
I have never seen it in person, but if you look at the photos of the control stations inside ship combat command centers, etc, you’ll see trackballs instead of mice for human-machine interface. I would guess it is because if you are rolling around in heavy seas or otherwise have shocks from collisions or missile hits, you don’t want the mouse being jarred around or flying off from the table and falling on the ground, triggering unintentional clicks, etc. So you can say your trackball is combat-qualified control setup.
