I am preparing to do a review of various arcade trackballs and had the idea of using a digital tachometer to measure how fast the trackball would spin.
The idea is I can take a power source, like an r/c car's wheel and bring the trackball up to a known speed. Then I would take away the power source and measure how fast the trackball continued to spin and for how long.
I have a few questions if anyone has used these before.
- With a laser and or infared tach, will I need a "dot" or mark on the trackball to get a reading?
- Does anyone know of a tach that has a PC interface that would allow me to create a chart of the speed to time distribution?
- Lastly, I also need something to assist in measuring the tracking performance of the trackballs. Do they lose accuracy while moving faster? DO they skip? etc. I have seen little mouse type applications that do similar things but nothing that records results. If anyone knows of something like this please let me know.
james at retroblast dot com