mouse

209 Articles

The Confusing World Of Bus Mice

December 30, 2025 by 33 Comments

The USB port which first appeared on our computers some time in the mid-1990s has made interfacing peripherals an easy task, save for the occasional upside down connector. But in the days before USB there were a plethora of plugs and sockets for peripherals, often requiring their own expansion card. Among these were mice, and [Robert Smallshire] is here with a potted history of the many incompatible standards which confuse the retrocomputing enthusiast to this day.

The first widely available mice in the 1980s used a quadrature interface, in which the output from mechanical encoders coupled to the mouse ball is fed directly to the computer interface which contains some form of hardware or microcontroller decoder. These were gradually superseded by serial mice that used an RS-232 port, then PS/2 mice, and finally the USB variant you probably use today.

Among those quadrature mice — or bus mice, as early Microsoft marketing referred to them — were an annoying variety of interfaces. Microsoft, Commodore, and Atari mice are similar electrically and have the same 9-pin D connector, yet remain incompatible with each other. The write-up takes a dive into the interface cards, where we find the familiar 8255 I/O port at play. We’d quite like to have heard about the Sun optical mice with their special mouse pad too, but perhaps their omission illustrates the breadth of the bus mouse world.

This piece has certainly broadened our knowledge of quadrature mice, and we used a few of them back in the day. If you only have a USB mouse and your computer expects one of these rarities, don’t worry, there’s an adapter for that.

Moving Mousepad Is An Elegant Aimbot

December 27, 2025 by 12 Comments

These days, it can be hard to remain competitive in online shooters without spending your entire life dedicated to the sport. This leads some to explore the world of competitive aids. (AKA: cheating.) A great example is [Nick], who built a mechanical aimbot to help in this regard.

[Nick’s] build moves a mousepad underneath the mouse opposite to the desired movement direction, in order to simulate the mouse movements required to aim at targets in game. This is achieved with the aid of a XDraw A4 pen plotter, which served as a cheap prebuilt X-Y motion platform. The plotter responds to simple serial commands, which makes it easy to control. The X-Y gantry was mounted underneath the desk so the mousepad sits seamlessly on top of the desk, sliding neatly on low-friction mouse skate stickers.

With the mousepad control system built, it was then necessary to figure out how to turn it into an aimbot. [Nick] already had a machine vision tool to detect enemies in shooting game, so it was merely modified to make the right mousepad movements to get the crosshairs right where they needed to be before firing. In testing, it proved more than capable at helping a new player achieve far superior aim, as a good aimbot should.

We’ve featured similar projects before that use complex mechanical contraptions to aim for you. Yes, it’s still cheating, but it’s a lot harder to detect than a traditional aimbot. That doesn’t make it right, per se, just more subtle. Video after the break. Continue reading “Moving Mousepad Is An Elegant Aimbot” →

Humane Mousetrap Lets You Know It’s Caught Something

November 18, 2025 by 45 Comments

“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door,” so goes the saying, but VHS beat Betamax and the world hasn’t been the same since. In any case, you might not get rich building a better mousetrap, but you can certainly create something more humane than the ol’ spring’n’snap, as [nightcustard] demonstrates.

The concept is the same as many humane mousetraps on the market. The mouse is lured into a confined cavity with the use of bait, and once inside, a door closes to keep the mouse inside without injuring it. [nightcustard] achieved this by building a plastic enclosure with plenty of air holes, which is fitted with a spring-loaded door. When a mouse walks through an infra-red break beam sensor, a Raspberry Pi Pico W triggers a solenoid which releases the door, trapping the mouse inside. This design was chosen over a passive mechanical solution, because [nightcustard] noted that mice in the attic were avoiding other humane traps with obvious mechanical trigger mechanisms.

As a bonus, the wireless connectivity of the Pi Pico W allows the trap to send a notification via email when it has fired. Thus, you can wake up in the morning and check your emails to see if you need to go and release a poor beleaguered mouse back into the wild. This is critical, as otherwise, if you forget to check your humane trap… it stops being humane pretty quickly.

If you’re looking for more inspiration to tackle your mouse problems, we can help. We’ve featured other traps of this type before, too. Meanwhile, if you’ve got your own friendly homebrew solutions to pesky pest problems, don’t hesitate to hit up the tipsline.

Attack Turns Mouse Into Microphone

October 15, 2025 by 14 Comments

As computer hardware gets better and better, most of the benefits are readily apparent to users. Faster processors, less power consumption, and lower cost are the general themes here. But sometimes increased performance comes with some unusual downsides. A research group at the University of California, Irvine found that high-performance mice have such good resolution that they can be used to spy on a user’s speech or other sounds around them.

The mice involved in this theoretical attack need to be in the neighborhood of 20,000 dpi, as well as having a relatively high sampling rate. With this combination it’s possible to sense detail fine enough to resolve speech from the vibrations of the mouse pad. Not only that, but the researchers noted that this also enables motion tracking of people in the immediate vicinity as the vibrations caused by walking can also be decoded. The attack does require a piece of malware to be installed somewhere on the computer, but the group also theorize that this could easily be done since most security suites don’t think of mouse input data as particularly valuable or vulnerable.

Even with the data from the mouse, an attacker needs a sophisticated software suite to be able to decode and filter the data to extract sounds, and the research team could only extract around 60% of the audio under the best conditions. The full paper is available here as well. That being said, mice will only get better from here so this is certainly something to keep an eye on. Mice aren’t the only peripherials that have roundabout attacks like this, either.

Thanks to [Stephen] for the tip!

Continue reading “Attack Turns Mouse Into Microphone” →

A Serial Mouse For A Homebrew 8-bit Computer

September 21, 2025 by 2 Comments

[Too Many Wires] has a custom computer he’s building. He wanted a mouse, but USB is a bit of a stretch for the fledgling computer. We might have opted for PS/2, but he went for something even older: a serial mouse connected with a DE-9 (colloquially, a DB-9). Check it out in his recent video update on the project below.

Don’t remember serial mice? They were very common many years ago, and apparently, you can still buy new ones, which makes you wonder what people are doing with them. If you are an old hand at serial, you’ll immediately know why he couldn’t get it to work at first. If you haven’t worked with RS-232 gear before, you’ll learn a lot.

The protocol is simple enough, and you can read the code or find plenty of old documents. He’s using a UART chip, which offloads the CPU. However, the PS/2 mice are very easy to work with directly, and you could skip the +/- 12V RS-232 and other issues.

Either way, however, using an RS-232 or PS/2 mouse in a project is relatively straightforward. You might not think you need a mouse, but don’t forget, they are really accurate two-axis sensors. An optical mouse on a motion table, for example, could be worth something.

The computer is based on [Ben Eater]’s design, if you want more details on that. Can’t decide between RS-232 and PS/2? You don’t have to.

Continue reading “A Serial Mouse For A Homebrew 8-bit Computer” →

Physical Aimbot Shoots For Success In Valorant

August 11, 2025 by 18 Comments

Modern competitive games have a great deal of anti-cheat software working to make sure you can’t hack the games to get a competitive advantage. [Kamal Carter] decided to work around this by building a physical aimbot for popular FPS Valorant.

The concept is straightforward enough. [Kamal] decided to hardmount an optical mouse to a frame, while moving a mousepad around beneath it with an off-the-shelf Cartesian CNC platform, but modified to be driven by DC motors for quick response. This gave him direct control over the cursor position which is largely undistinguishable from a human being moving the mouse. Clicking the mouse is achieved with a relay. As for detecting enemies and aiming at them, [Kamal] used an object detection system called YOLO. He manually trained the classifier to detect typical Valorant enemies and determine their position on the screen. The motors are then driven to guide the aim point towards the enemy, and the fire command is then given.

The system has some limitations—it’s really only capable of completing the shooting range challenges in Valorant. The vision model isn’t trained on the full range of player characters in Valorant, and it would prove difficult to use such a system in a competitive match. Still, it’s a neat way to demonstrate how games can be roboticized and beaten outside of just the software realm. Video after the break. Continue reading “Physical Aimbot Shoots For Success In Valorant” →

Smallest Gaming Mouse Has Crazy Fast Polling Rate And Resolution

July 2, 2025 by 11 Comments

[juskim] wanted to build a tiny mouse, but it couldn’t just be any mouse. It had to be a high-tech gaming mouse that could compete with the best on raw performance. The results are impressive, even if the final build is perhaps less than ideal for pro-level gameplay.

The build riffs on an earlier build from [juskim] that used little more than a PCB and a 3D-printed housing to make a barebones skeleton mouse. However, this one ups the sophistication level. At the heart of the build is the nRF54L15 microcontroller, which is paired with a PAW3395 mouse sensor which is commonly used in high-end gaming mice. It offers resolution up to 26K DPI for accurate tracking, speeds up to 650 ips, and 8 kHz sampling rates. Long story short, if you want fine twitch control, this is the sensor you’re looking for. The sensor and microcontroller are laced together on a custom PCB with a couple of buttons, a battery, and a charging circuit, and installed in a barebones 3D-printed housing to make the final build as small as possible.

The only real thing letting the design down is the mouse’s key feature—the size. There’s very little body to grab on to and it’s hard to imagine being able to play most fast-paced games at a high level with such a tiny device. Nevertheless, the specs are hardcore and capable, even if the enclosure isn’t.

[juskim] loves building tiny peripherals; we’ve featured his fine work before, too. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Smallest Gaming Mouse Has Crazy Fast Polling Rate And Resolution” →