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| Ever spin a pencil under the eye of your optical mouse? |
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| Mark70:
I was just reading on making spinners and rotary joysticks out of hard drive bearings and how making spinners and rotaty joysticks is difficult, and only one guy makes an optical interface that works, etc... So just for giggles, I picked up a pencil and held it in front of the eye on my optical mouse and rolled the pencil in place. The mouse tracks along the screen in a fairly straight line. So are guys using optical mouse hacks to make simple home made spinners and rotary sticks? |
| Mark70:
http://home.comcast.net/~maccody/robotics/croms-1/croms-1.html Just for interest. Here is an article that uses an optical mouse sensor in combination with a lens arrangement of some kind to make the optical mouse sensor function at a distance for robotics purposes. Now, I haven't read the article in depth, but I get the idea that these guys are doing more than a simple mouse hack. There's some talk about printing circuit boards about a 1/4 of the way throught he article. |
| Kremmit:
There was a thread a while back where somebody did that. I think the mouse ended up tracking the rotation on the head of a bolt. Dude said it worked fine- I'm honestly surprised that nobody else has done one yet. Now where was that thread... |
| Kremmit:
Got it- apparently he's done two different versions: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=53362.0 http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=50654.0 |
| muzland:
I have mounted an optical mouse underneath a hard drive bearing and it works like a charm. If I get time I will dig up some photos You need to position it fairly accurately but it only takes a few minutes. Mine is not quite in a straight line but works great on all of the games I have tried (pole postion, warlords, tempest, tac scan, arkanoid, etc.......). Arkanoid plays especially well (perhaps too sensitive but this can be adjusted). Somebody more knowledgeable may know if this gets around the resolution issue that is talked about so much. The mouse is nothing special. Just a standard dell optical USB mouse that can be bought for around |
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