Ever spin a pencil under the eye of your optical mouse?

[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

[Mark70]

Great, now it's a holiday monday (canadian thanks giving) and I need to find something in my house that's junk, and has high speed bearings in it.  I hacked apart an old cordless drill which the batteries wouldn't charge (cheaper to buy an new drill than replacement batteries lol).... no bearings. 

I have an old $40 dvd player that never worked that they gave me when I bought my truck (cost of shipping for repairs was more than the value of the player)... it has a smooth spinning motor that spins the disks, but it's really fine.  Not sure if it would be tough enough to stand up to arcade play, or if I could attach stuff to it; and dammned if I have a jeweler's screwdriver small enough to get it out of the frame it's mounted in.

...hmmm me with no skateboards or junk hard drives.  Guess I'll have to wait until after the holiday.

[muzland]

Hi Mark70,

Not found any piccies yet but......

I mounted my mouse upside down so that the optical sensor was scanning the bearing directly.

The HD bearing is mounted in 1/2" MDF which is 11" by 4" as this is a modular panel that snaps in and out.

The beauty of this mounting method is that it reduces the number of parts required (simply screw it to the wood through the base putting some washers as spacers underneath the mouse to get the correct height), works great and provides easy hand held operation of the mouse buttons. I simply sellotaped the top of the mouse back onto the PCB and base.

Simple hand held operation if required with the mouse buttons within easy reach.

I will dig up some pictures for you.

Muz

[muzland]

Here is a picture.