The SpaceMouse is an interesting gadget beloved by engineers and artists alike. They function almost like joysticks, but with six degrees of freedom (6DoF). This can make them feel a bit like magic, which is why [Thought Bomb Design] decided to tear one apart and figure out how it works.
The movement mechanism ended up being relatively simple; three springs soldered between two PCBs with one PCB being fixed to the base and the other moving in space. Instead of using a potentiometer or even hall effect sensor as you might expect from a joystick, the space mouse contained a set of six LEDs and light meters.
The sensing array came nestled inside a dark box made of PCBs. An injection molded plastic piece with slits would move to interrupt the light coming from the LEDs. The mouse uses the varying values coming from the light meter to decode Cartesian motion of the space mouse. It’s very simple and a bit hacky, just how we like it.
Looking for a similar input device, but want to take the DIY route? We’ve seen a few homebrew versions of this concept that might provide you with the necessary inspiration.
That’s pretty neat! It also would seem that these things are absurdly expensive for what they actually are…
Maybe, but my wireless spacemouse is the best investment I’ve made for my CAD work. It has lasted four years so far and works just as well as day one. I originally bought it because I “thought it would be cool”, but it quickly became a staple at my workstation. It gets new software support all the time, opened PrusaSlicer the other day and was surprised to see I could manipulate the plater just like SOLIDWORKS. Battery lasts ages, too. I’ve seen a few DIY options over the years but it’s nice enough that I’m not compelled to try anything else.
My original USB space mouse still works fine.
But the drivers refuse to recognize it on a new computer.
Despite the same version drivers still working on the old (both running 10)?
It still works (badly) with some software, the USB device is there…
I wish I could support them, but bastards!
It could be the maze of USB devices on this computer…
Clutching at straws, but do you have the SM connected directly, or via a USB hub?
On many motherboards, not all USB ports are equal; some share controllers with other, onboard devices. So although it’s counter-intuitive, sometimes even swapping to a different port makes a difference.
Do you have the same “maze of USB devices” on the old computer? It could be a contention issue.
Sorry I can’t offer anything more useful; I don’t have a SM, but I do have considerable experience with USB.
I minimized the actively connected devices, plugged it directly into both USB 2 and 3 ports, still the software doesn’t find it.
I found it in device manager once, don’t recall it’s name, but it was there.
The spacemouse is old, only an old version of their software supports it.
I have considered going back even further and trying to find an old driver set that recognizes it, then letting upgrades happen.
The problem with going further, removing all the drivers for input devices, is that it isn’t install that fails, it’s startup.
I think it’s futile.
They’ve decided that my lease on the hardware I bought is up.
The real mystery is ‘how is it working on the old computer?’
It’s a super crusty old windows install.
Perhaps spying on what that computer accesses at startup.
Bet it’s an INI file.
I’ve spent 10x the price of a new one (in time) trying to get the old one working.
If there was an alternative, I’d have already bought it.
They pissed me off, yes I’m cheap.
Bet I ‘sold’ 20 spacemice for them, before this.
I have the same issue with my SpacePilot (the old flat rectangular version). Worked fine for a couple of years using an older driver. I’ve reinstalled Windows at some point and it struggles to work, even though it’s still Win 10 and still using the old drivers.
As you said, it kinda works with some software, but I can no longer use the utility to assign the hotkeys, change settings etc.
i bought mine mostly as a thruster controller for kerbal space program, but yea id use it in cad too if i can remember than i have it. i dont use it often, it gets allocated to paperweight duty. its a good left hand controller in 6dof games as well (when paired with a mouse with enough buttons). i just wish the software made it easier to put into joystick emulation mode.
The irony being that under the hood, it’s a USB HID standard joystick.
$180 to $400 for a niche product that is well made seems pretty reasonably priced to me.
I used to have a SpaceOrb 360, which was an oddball (literally?) game controller (serial not USB). I never really used it for games, but it was a real treat for game development and for moving the camera around in 3d modeling.
well, their driver and update policy is crap though. have a perfectly working device? shame you can’t use it anymore. Here, we give you some peanuts so you are inclined to jump another 200 bucks to us.
I have one that’s lasted 11 years and counting, and I got it 2nd hand. And I use it daily (CAD work). Aside from the rubberized coating deteriorating and the rubber feet coming unglued, it’s got no problems. Definitely worth it for a non-disposable.
The thing to remember where the costs come from. So that injection mould and all the ones that might have been in the R&D costs the same for a product like this is in the same ballpark as that bargain bin multimeter case that goes into a few thousand times more products.
And the scale of production isn’t likely to be large enough to really pay for tooling up a very efficient production line either, so the manual labour per device in the assembly, the cost per component ordered in, and no doubt every single other element that makes the end product is probably higher per device as its such a niche product.
If you try to make a product or complex project yourself you’ll suddenly find just the prototyping costs are likely to skyrocket, and that final product can only become cheap if you have enough orders or enough fiscal backing willing to take the risk of tooling up to make it cheap to produce.
99.9% humans reaction: “I’m not going to pay so much for 6 leds, some springs and wire!111!!” :)
Good point, well made. The build quality is also better than cheaper items .
Engineering is essentially getting the as much performance as possible from as little put in as you can. The, likely moderate manufacturing cost, given the number of parts that need to be assembled in the proper relation with the proper motion, is only a part of the price. The engineering (including HOW to manufacture it) and software are the greater part.
I have had one for a number of years, and it stays with my CAD workstation in my office. I am reminded WHY it was worth the money every time I am in the field with just a laptop and maybe, if there is a surface anywhere to use it on- a rarity- a wireless mouse.
For a niche piece of gear that’s well made I think the price of ~150 isn’t too bad. At least there’s no subscription or other BS like we see infesting the engineering field.
The original high costs came from how absurdly expensive those photo ICs are. They’re not your typical kit and from what I could originally find only a few manufacturers produce them and the main buyers of them are camera companies for advanced rangefinders.
3 Dconnexion buying them was an anomaly as far as supply chain and supply-demand are concerned.
At some point they moved away from this design. I’m not sure how many intermediates exist outside of minor tweaks, but the next major design I know of was magnetic, with a much simpler design. But once again there’s costs involved, they were very early to the whole 3D magnetometer setup thing, quite possibly the only company to produce a legitimate product, so costs are understandable; outside of this, 3D magnetometry seems to be more of a researched thing with chips for it ‘existing’ or having their IP licensed out, but not much ever really came from this, though what has come from this is very expensive scientific equipment, but modern variation of this has far surpassed the SpaceMouse’s primative, by comparison, design. I’m not sure if there’s a more modern iteration that has changed from this, haven’t seen a brand new SpaceMouse torn down, and pattent diving hit a dead end for me when I couldn’t find the newer parents under Logitech’s or 3Dconnexion’s names.
Speaking of Logitech, that’s also where modern cost comes from, you’re paying for their product where they’re known to be a bit overpriced in their top-end and niche market segments.
IMO, and this is true with a lot of modern HaD, this article is just parroting what someone came across and didn’t research in the slightest. If a typical person can do research to find good information and have enough competency to produce logical conclusions, then someone posting an article could do more than just parrot the most surface-level things. Comments like yours realistically should not exist, the article should otherwise explain things like costs and complexities that would otherwise render predictable comments like yours moot through basic discussion within the article itself, or at least provide enough relevant information to where the reader can produce conclusions as to why things are the way they currently are.
And on that topic, I think the original design, the overly expensive optical one, is probably the most bulletproof one; low noise, low jitter, high accuracy with insane redundancy, and low power. I even vire the later magnetometer variant as a lesser option, as it’s likely based on hall sensors, though a decent MR IC would be a decent sensor. The various DIY projects just don’t live up to this, especially the optical ones using material thickness as a dimmer for the emitter, or the joystick based ones having such loose tolerances. There’s more sensor types to explore, but frankly I don’t think they ever will be explored, either people don’t know other technologies or they don’t want to put the effort into developing something. I also think VR tracking provides a fairly substantial alternative, plus an insane amount of usable range compared to these short-throw 3D knobs, not to mention the future of 3D anything is more of less based in what XR will provide; not to mention the cost of integration will inherently be lower due to the target markets and projected growth of those markets.
VR type controllers are certainly good but the big difference between quality tracking of an object floating in space and a joystick object like this is the haptic feedback – you only know the controller is doing anything in VR because the stuff you are looking at is changing in response. Being able to feel under your fingers to get that faster/slower movement is just too nice to want to do without, espeically if you are not actually wearing the headset and doing everything in that virtual 3d space – as then your natural sense of where your hands are can overcome that lack of good haptics to some extent.
And while you could use VR tracking tech to track a joystick like this to do so you’d have to find a way to keep your hand out of the way so it can track as precisely as you’d like, and it just isn’t as portable.
I have a couple of these. Used them in my Car PC back in the day as well as CAD. The last one I bought in 2009 (not wireless) was $48.95
I always thought the ahmsville dial v2 ($110, via tindie) looked like an elegant magnetometer-based homologue.
https://www.tindie.com/products/ahmsvillelabs/ahmsville-dial-v2-absolute-variant/
Would love to hear, if anyone has one, whether it’s as neat as it looks!
Looks like it’s missing Z-axis translation sensing (ie, you can’t pull up or down on it), though you could obviously remap one of its other inputs (such as the touchpad) to handle that.
What? A device built to last? Barstewards should have downrated those springs to pewter so they’d break just after warranty.
It is nice to see the days of quality goods built to last sometimes raises its head.
I’m gonna treat myself to one of these one day. I’ve heard they’re good for Solidworks which I use multiple times per week anyway.
I would love to have more support for them in casual software. Google Earth Pro supported them, but the Web App does not.
as a joystick nerd my biggest gripe is that there is too much axis bleed. an attempt to move in any particular axis will bleed into all the other axes. thats one of the reasons i prefer two spring gimbal designs to single spring ones. i also disliked twist handles for the same reason. ive seen other space mouse teardown videos before, and that made me decide to use an optical trigger on my 3d printed joystick projects, so i can determine depression depth with a photodiode and simple circuit and a 3d printed light slit and wedge, this is combined with a tactile button to give it a click at its maximum range.
in general im sad that there are fewer optical joystick technologies in the wild. ever since i saw what essentially was a mouse sensor in an ms sidewinder joystick, i have wondered why its sort of an evolutionary dead end, especially with high resolution low latency sensors available now. everyone wants hall effect but optical is a lot less sensitive to em noise from the electronics. micro-dot leds and a modern mouse sensor could probibly fit in your typical thumbstick module.
The “light meters” are most likely 1D lateral effect photodiodes.
The MS Sidewinder joystick mentioned above also used a 2D lateral effect photodiode.
They are great for sensing the position of a single dot of light very rapidly.
You can sense multiple dots as long as only one is lit at a time.
The MS joystick used this feature to detect joystick yaw movement with 2 LEDs.
The optical sensors look a lot like hamamatsu One-dimensional PSDs (position sensitive detectors):
https://www.hamamatsu.com/eu/en/product/optical-sensors/distance-position-sensor/psd.html
If you look into their technical documents, you can see that they are using lateral effect photodiodes for their PSDs. They just say “photodiode”, but the description matches.
ms sidewinder line was such a good product. so well built that the designers autographed the inside of the case.
I recently built a custom version of OS3M (open source 3D mouse). The hardware works pretty well, but the situation with software support is worse. I hacked the firmware so that it works with libspnav (that part was quite easy), but the problem is on application side. OpenSCAD works relatively ok. Blender works ok. FreeCAD works, but the pivot point in its 3D view is somehow very non-intuitive. KiCad doesn’t have 3D mouse support on Linux.
So looks like I would have to code quite a bit to make use of it. I also think I would need a lot more buttons than the four I put in my design.
I gave the Spacemouse a try, but could never get along with the long-throw weeble-wobble cap required for the position sensors to do anything. a 6-axis force-sensor (e.g. load-cell based) would be much more pleasant to use, at least for me. Not so easy to design or manufacture, though.
I worked with someone who made a capacitive version of this. Same general construction, but the sensing was done using the distance between capacitive plates, which varied, of course, due to movement of the sensor.
That’s a massive simplification, but that was the principle of operation, and it worked very well.
A teardown of the Spacemouse isn’t new. There has been a Web page of a teardown available for years with lots of information on how it works.
https://www.alvarez-engineer.com/2022/03/20/spacenavigator-teardown/
Interesting. Although it uses the same type of sensors, they are in a different arrangement. Maybe a cost-reduced version using more clever engineering?