A Mouse Becomes A Camera
If your pointing device is a mouse, turn it over. The chances are you’ll see a red LED light if you’re not seriously old-school and your mouse has a ball, …read more Continue reading A Mouse Becomes A Camera
Category Archives: optical mouse
Roll-On Deodorant Controller Heats Up Racing Game
What do you get when you combine roll-on deodorant containers and a soccer ball with an optical mouse and an obscure 90s Japanese video game about racing armadillos? Well, you …read more Continue reading Roll-On Deodorant Controller Heats Up Racing Game
Massive Mouse Game Mimics Classic Software Crashes
Computer mice come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, but are typically designed to fit in the palm of your hand. While some users with large hands may find …read more Continue reading Massive Mouse Game Mimics Classic Software Crashes
Soap Mouse Is a Slippery Interface for Mid-Air Input
We all have those gnarly hacks that we still think about years after we first saw them. For serial tipster [Inne], one of those is [Patrick Baudisch]’s soap mouse, which …read more Continue reading Soap Mouse Is a Slippery Interface for Mid-Air Input
Build Your Own Mouse For High Performance
For the dedicated gamer or hardcore computer user, there’s plenty of options for high-end input peripherals. We’ve seen plenty of makers build their own bespoke keyboards, too. Less commonly seen are custom mice, but [gipetto] has crafted just such a device to suit their tastes.
The mouse is based on …read more
Roll Your Own Trackball Mouse
What do you do when you’re into trackball mice, but nothing out there is affordable or meets all your murine needs? You build one, of course. And if you’re like [Dangerously Explosive], who has a bunch of old optical mice squeaking around the shop, you can mix and match them to build the perfect one.
The mouse, which looks frozen mid-transformation into a rodential assassin, is a customized work of utilitarian art. Despite the excellent results, this project was not without its traps. [Dangerously] got really far into the build before discovering the USB interface chip was dead. Then he …read more
Semi-automatic Mouse Requires No Permit
When [Kerry]’s son asked him if there was a way to make a mouse click rapidly, he knew he could take the easy way and just do it in software. But what’s the fun in that? In a sense, it’s just as easy to do it with hardware—all you have to do is find a way to change the voltage in order to simulate mouse clicks.
[Kerry] decided to use the venerable 555 timer as an astable oscillator. He wired a momentary button in parallel with the left mouse button. A 50k mini pot used as the discharge resistor allows …read more
Semi-automatic Mouse Requires No Permit
When [Kerry]’s son asked him if there was a way to make a mouse click rapidly, he knew he could take the easy way and just do it in software. But what’s the fun in that? In a sense, it’s just as easy to do it with hardware—all you have to do is find a way to change the voltage in order to simulate mouse clicks.
[Kerry] decided to use the venerable 555 timer as an astable oscillator. He wired a momentary button in parallel with the left mouse button. A 50k mini pot used as the discharge resistor allows …read more
DIY Optical Sensor Breakout Board makes DIY Optical Mouse
Wanting to experiment with using optical mouse sensors but a bit frustrated with the lack of options, [Tom Wiggins] rolled his own breakout board for the ADNS 3050 optical mouse sensor and in the process of developing it used it to make his own 3D-printed optical mouse. Optical mouse sensors are essentially self-contained cameras that track movement and make it available to a host. To work properly, the sensor needs a lens assembly and appropriate illumination, both of which mate to a specialized bracket along with the sensor. [Tom] found a replacement for the original ADNS LED but still couldn’t …read more
Continue reading DIY Optical Sensor Breakout Board makes DIY Optical Mouse
Mouse Brains Plus Line Laser Equals Rangefinder
[Neumi] wrote in with a sweet robotics hack. It’s a 2D laser distance sensor (YouTube) made with a cheap line laser and an optical mouse’s flow-sensor chip used as a low-resolution camera. In one sense, it’s a standard laser-distance-sensor project. But it is clever for a whole bunch of reasons.
For one, using a mouse sensor as a low-res camera is awesome. It’s designed to read from a standard red LED, so the sensitivity is in just the right ballpark for use with a line laser. It returns a 30×30 pixel greyscale image, which is just about the right amount …read more
Continue reading Mouse Brains Plus Line Laser Equals Rangefinder