SpaceBall 5000 and SpaceExplorer

[mogumbo]

Do the SpaceBall 5000 and SpaceExplorer use the same 6-DOF hardware internally? Since the SpaceBall 5000 has been discontinued I'm trying to get an idea about whether the two devices will behave and feel the same.

Also, I wrote a driver for the SpaceBall; it appears to send a 16 byte data structure for every event. Does the SpaceExplorer send the same data structure? That would make life easy for me....

[crobl]

Hello mogumbo,

the SpaceBall 5000 and the SpaceExplorer are quite similar. They should also behave and feel very similar when compared to each other.
The SpaceExplorer could be more sensitive, though.

Regarding the data format. Its should also be the same speaking for the serial (RS232) SpaceExplorer.

I'd like to point out, that it is always best to take advantage of our driver and our SDK. This way you're always able to use the latest devices and have no troubles if a device changes its feature set.

Christian Robl
3Dconnexion