Phatball

From Interlock Rochester Wiki

Phatball is a giant trackball that wooby is building out of a bowling ball. A pressure sensor mounted sandwiched in thin rubber and hooked to an arduino / mouse click button that would let you "click" the ball with sufficient pressure.

Potential uses: ultimate Katamari Damacy input device, virtual globe/google earth. I'm looking at the Penumbra OpenGL library for Clojure to make a basic Katamari clone

Basic plan: piece of plywood, with three evenly-spaced ball-bearing casters mounted at 45 degrees on wooden ramps that hold the ball. Optical mouse sensor mounted in middle.

Status: I've ordered the casters on 3/20, planning on getting 0.1 together by the end of March