Spaceball 5000 Protocol?

[ajmas]

I was recently given an old Spaceball 5000 for a study project I am working on. Since I am using MacOS X none of the available drivers were suitable for my needs. Through a bit of detective work I have been able to get the Spaceball to give me ball data, but to save me a bit of time I am hoping someone could clarify some details.

When the ball returns to its center position I get the packet:

dH00H00H00H00H00H00

This represents the movement along the 3 axis and rotation around the 3 axis. This represents the movement along the 3 axis and rotation around the 3 axis. Has anyone worked with this before and worked out:
- which field represent which input
- what the exact format of the field is?

PS I hope posting this is not contrary to forum rules - I couldn't see any mention.

[jwick]

The three translations (X,Y,Z) are sent, followed by the three rotations (X,Y,Z). The data are 16-bit signed integers.

[ajmas]

Thanks.

4 bytes for a 16-bit integer. The first byte appears to be the sign (H or G), how is the remaining part of the value encoded? From tests I see that the only values for each byte returned are:

.023569:<?ABCDEGHKLMNPSenors

I am guessing BCD or Base26, but then again it could be something else.

I realise I probably asking for a bit much here, but any help would be appreciated.

[jwick]

The data is not encoded from the device. It must be the OSX device driver that is encoding it. See if they have a raw data mode.