Kensington Orbit mouse for trackball/spinner?

chubsta

I would like to play the odd trackball - Missile Command, Marbel madness, Centipede - game, and a few spinner ones - Arkanoid, Tempest.
I have come across this - a USB mouse that has a trackball and some sort of spinner-type thingy - so was wondering if it would be a cheap alternative to spending a fortune on a proper setup just for the odd game. Has anyone any experience of it at all?

Kensington 6014035 Orbit Mouse - Wired Ergonomic TrackBall Mouse

I know it won't be anywhere as good as the proper controls, but is it likely to be acceptable and 'close enough', particularly on Arkanoid?

YFZdude

@chubsta
I'm not a user of trackballs or spinners as of yet, but I have a couple of thoughts just looking at the page and pictures.

First, the ring around the ball says it "scroll pages with ease." So this is most likely the modified version of a typical scroll wheel between standard mouse buttons. You would need to be sure that Scroll Up / Down can be mapped to the axis you want to use in those games.

Second, assuming the above issue can be resolved and function properly, I would be skeptical that the ring would have a good feel in the action of turning it. Many scroll wheels have a somewhat 'clicky' feel as they hit stop points around the wheel. But if it works well enough to get the job done then it might be a nice solution for the occasional game.

jmbooth2000

I have one of these installed in my retropie cabinet - works great with all those game. It's fiddly to setup but doable.

Jonathan

Ashpool

@jmbooth2000 From a hazy shade of memory - have they changed the design for the scroll-dial? IIRC those where, as @YFZdude said, more like a typical scroll-wheel, so not free spinning but more of the click.click.click-stepping kind.

jmbooth2000

@Ashpool That matches my memory. When I bought it I thought it would be handy to have both a trackball and spinner. It turns out that a trackball makes a pretty good spinner and I didn't need both. In addition it was much easier to retrofit the trackball to my arcade than the trackball plus spinner. This is a much cheaper option than the dedicated arcade trackballs you can buy online.

What I did was take the trackball apart so I had just the circuit board and ball attachment (i.e. remove the trackball case). I then cut a hole to match the socket that holds ball and pried the trackball socket apart. I then slide the back part through and re-glued the socket before re-inserting the ball. You don't need the buttons as you map the regular arcade buttons in RetroArch. It works great with games like Marble Madness, Arkanoid and usable for gun games (a gun would still be way better).

Ashpool

@jmbooth2000

@jmbooth2000 said in Kensington Orbit mouse for trackball/spinner?:

It turns out that a trackball makes a pretty good spinner

Yep, you are right on that Trackballs may be a good replacement for Spinners and I am glad about it, because my arcade panel has no room to accommodate a real spinner [1].

But I think the OP asked about both inputs (dial and trackball) to be usable as such, so maybe for him/her/* a tinkering solutions like yours may not be what is desired :/

P.S.: still your tinkering with the device sounds pretty cool ;]

1: I have just a U.Trak from Ultimarc (Trackball), but for games aimed to be using a steering wheel... well, I really miss the option of a real spinning device on my setup.

jmbooth2000

@Ashpool To be clear both imputs worked. The trackball defaulted to x and Y. If I remember rightly the dial defaulted to a second mouse (it might have been Z though). The dial definitely but it didn't really spin like you want a spinner to do :-(.

Addison

It's not much but perhaps someone here would find the following Imgur post to be an entertaining read for creative ideas.

https://imgur.com/gallery/FfXHWYR