Electronic repair

During my attendance at SLCC 2007, Moo Money gave a presentation on using 3d mice with second life. She was specifically presenting the Space Navigator from 3D connecxion. There were problems connecting to the internet at the time and the demonstration could not go on.


The hotel had shut down our internet connection. They assumed that all of the bandwidth on the network was due to someone running servers. Generally, SL is heavy on network traffic.


I was still able to ask moo Money some questions about the device and got to see what it actually looked like. My main concern was that I didn’t want something that would require me to move my hands around in the air. It turns out that the device is much simpler then that. moo was able to answer my question indicating that this particular device remains in one place. You push against it with pressure, and it is able to move around from it.


That very night, I put in an order for my own Personal Edition of the Space Navigator from Amazon. It was much heavier than I expected when it arrived in the mail. I found that I needed to change the settings of the Joystick Flycam in order to use it. I found the instructions on the wiki for the optimal settings.


Personally, I love this little gadget. It’s small, shiny, and gives you a different perspective on second life. For shopping around large malls, it is a blast. Making movies are fun as well.


A few months ago, I had problems getting the 3D mouse to work. I was clueless as to what the problem was. This weekend I tried to attack the problem again. I uninstalled software, reinstalled, verified services were working, made sure other devices were working in the USB port and even tried the mouse on another computer.


After a few hours of this and a few other things, I observed that my cats had chewed the cord of the device in two separate locations. I was upset over all the time that I had spent investigating the problem, and generally the loss of a cool toy.


Today I purchased a soldering iron, some electrical tape, a wire cutter, and some soldering flux. It seemed to be a long shot, but I figured why not try. The wire cutters did not have a small enough gauge to strip the wires, but I was able to work around it. The soldering iron was a little difficult to work with. It was a cold touch soldering iron that ran off of four AA batteries. The two leads on the end had to be able to conduct electricity through the solder, which was hard to do. A regular soldering iron would always be hot in this case and melt the solder without a problem.


During this time, I was just laughing at how funny it was to be trying to repair the wire. I was wrapping each wire with duct tape after the wires were soldered (red, green, black, white, and bare). I had to do it twice since the cats bit through the wires in two areas.


When all was said and done, I plugged the 3D mouse into my USB port and heard the little USB connected sound. I was able to start the sample programs and the device worked great without any flaws. My main concern is outside noise interfering since the metal wrapper is no longer protecting the wires that I soldered.


The true test was to run Second Life. I got in and turned on the joystick flycam. From there I was home free.