we have a spaceball 2003, a 1990’s-era 3D interface device, and we tasked ladyada with getting it working! it has a 2.5mm DC jack + RS-232 cable for data, and its encoded in binary data with a fairly simple protocol – lots of data here: https://spacemice.org/index.php?title=Spaceball_2003 ! with a little pyserial work, we got the button presses and XYZ vector data out. code is posted in this gist https://gist.github.com/ladyada/f9f5ab3a4ee7a73337d251e267038de9 . we were thinking we could make this into a USB HID device with circuitpython next! but first we’d have to have a way to convert rs-232 to ttl – video.
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Tried to reply on the video link but wanted to say HEY HEY HEY! Awesome! This is very similar to my QtPy-based Orbotron 9000 (link above, also https://github.com/thingotron/orb9k_3_hardware, https://github.com/thingotron/orb9k_circuitpython) which makes a gaming-compatible HID device out of the SpaceBall 360 and prelim support for SpaceBall 4000/4000FLX (also have an unsold rs232 shield for feathers but can share that pipes in the charge doubler voltage supply some of them relied on). It’s CircuitPython 5-based and I don’t have time to do much with it but MAN it’s cool seeing someone else playing with these!