successful optical mouse hacks?

[Bgnome]

i was just wondering if there was anyone out there that has successfully hacked an optical mouse for their controls?  there was a post not too long ago where a person who had problems his ball mouse hack looked up the datasheet on the controller chip.  on a whim, i cracked open an old usb optical mouse i had and to my chagrin, found that the optical sensor chip basically connects directly to the usb controller chip through 4 traces.  guess what those traces are?  thats right! they correspond to x+/x-/y+/y-!  that means, in theory, it should be easy to connect to any standard optic board.  this could mean that people won't have to hunt for usb ball mice or necessarily have to buy oscar's hack, (great guy tho! more power to him).  sure, you could still use the optical sensor for stuff, like maybe spinners or some other analog application but this would let you bypass that particular issue.

[u_rebelscum]

.... they correspond to x+/x-/y+/y-!  ....

Depends if the optical sensor chip and USB chip are seperate or not.  Many of the new ones the chips are one.  (or at least the new one I looked at was all on one chip.)

[Bgnome]

that may be a problem then..  my optical mouse has a separate board for the sensor which is connected to the mainboard with a ribbon cable.  i have noticed the same class usb controller chip in my macally trackball so at least with the separate chips you can bypass the optic sensor.  may still be useful for those with old optical mice laying around..

[Bgnome]

this is my mouse.  you can see the separate boards and the gray ribbon cable on the left, (red side indicates 5v line).

[Bgnome]

replaced ribbon cable with the corresponding wires from the optics.  also connected wires for buttons and LEDs.  works like a charm!

[brained]

way to go!!! did you looked at the IC datasheet!!
I was the one that had problems with my ball mouse
I recommend before hacking a mouse, google IC datasheet. It i'll save you a ton of headaches

[Bgnome]

yeah, it was really useful.  it also turns out that the optical sensor has a built in ps/2 interface capability.  i may be using that later for some sort of spinner or analog device..