A Mouse, No Hands!

April 11, 2025 by Jenny List 12 Comments

There are some ideas which someone somewhere has to try. Take [Uri Tuchman]’s foot mouse. It’s a computer mouse for foot operation, but it’s not just a functional block. Instead it’s an ornate inlaid-wood-and-brass affair in the style of a very fancy piece of antique footwear.

The innards of an ordinary USB mouse are placed in something best described as a wooden platform heel, upon which is placed a brass sole with a couple of sections at the front to activate the buttons with the user’s toes. The standout feature is the decoration. With engraving on the brass and inlaid marquetry on the wood, it definitely doesn’t look like any computer peripheral we’ve seen.

The build video is below the break, and we’re treated to all the processes sped up. At the end he uses it in a basic art package and in a piloting game, with varying degrees of succes. We’re guessing it would take a lot of practice to gain a level of dexterity with this thing, but we salute him for being the one who tries it.

This has to be the fanciest peripheral we’ve ever seen, but surprisingly it’s not the first foot mouse we’ve brought you.

Continue reading “A Mouse, No Hands!” →

Build Your Own Air Mouse, Okay?

March 17, 2025 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

Are you using a desk mouse like some kind of… normal computer user? Why, beg the heavens? For you could be using an air mouse, of your very own creation! [Misfit Maker] shows the way. Check out what he made in the video below.

An air mouse is a mouse you use in the air—which creates at least one major challenge. Since you’re not sliding along a surface, you can’t track the motion by mechanical friction like a ball mouse or by imaging as in an optical mouse. Instead, this build relies on a gyroscope sensor to track motion and translate that into pointer commands. The build relies on an ESP32-C3 as the microcontroller at the heart of things. It communicates with an MPU6050 gyroscope and accelerometer to track motion in space. It then communicates as a human interface device over Bluetooth, so you can use it with lots of different devices. The mouse buttons—plus media control buttons—are all capacitive touch-sensitive, thanks to an MPR121 touch sensor module.

There’s something neat about building your own tools to interface with the machines, almost like it helps meld the system to your whims. We see a lot of innovative mouse and HID projects around these parts.

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Tiny Mouse Ring Uses Prox Sensors

February 10, 2025 by Lewin Day 11 Comments

A traditional computer mouse typically fits in the palm of your hand. However, with modern technology, there’s no need for mice to be so large, as demonstrated by [juskim]’s neat little mouse ring. Check it out in the video below.

The concept is simple—it’s a tiny mouse that sits neatly on the end of one of your fingers. You then get the slightly surreal experience of pointing on your computer just by moving a single finger instead of your whole hand.

The project uses a typical optical mouse sensor for movement, as you might expect. However, there are no conventional switches for the left and right mouse buttons. Instead, [juskim] realized a more compact design was possible by using proximity sensors instead. The sensors detect the presence of his fingers on either side of the ring mouse. When one of the fingers is lifted, the absence of the finger triggers a mouse click, either left or right, depending on the finger.

The build started with junk box parts, but hooking up an Arduino Pro Micro dev board and other modules proved too cumbersome to use effectively. Instead, the build relies on an ATTO board, a tiny PCB featuring the same ATmega32U4 microcontroller. Similarly, the build relies on tiny proximity sensors from STM to fit in the “ring” form factor. It’s all wrapped up in a 3D-printed enclosure that fits snugly on the user’s finger.

We’ve seen some other neat mouse rings before, too. Or, if you want something really different, grab some keychains and make a 6DOF mouse.

Continue reading “Tiny Mouse Ring Uses Prox Sensors” →

Smallest USB Device… So Far

January 20, 2025 by Bryan Cockfield 37 Comments

For better or worse it seems to be human nature to compete with one another, as individuals or teams, rather than experience contentedness while moving to the woods and admiring nature Thoreau-style. On the plus side, competition often results in benefits for all of us, driving down costs for everything from agriculture to medical care to technology. Although perhaps a niche area of competition, the realm of “smallest USB device” seems to have a new champion: this PCB built by [Emma] that’s barely larger than the USB connector pads themselves.

With one side hosting the pads to make contact with a standard USB type-A connector, the other side’s real estate is taken up by a tiny STM32 microcontroller, four phototransistors that can arm or disarm the microcontroller, and a tiny voltage regulator that drops the 5V provided by the USB port to the 3.3V the STM32 needs to operate. This is an impressive amount of computing power for less than three millimeters of vertical space, and can operate as a HID device with a wide variety of possible use cases.

Perhaps the most obvious thing to do with a device like this would be to build a more stealthy version of this handy tool to manage micromanagers, but there are certainly other tasks that a tiny HID can be put to use towards. And, as far as the smallest USB device competition goes, we’d also note that USB-A is not the smallest connector available and, therefore, the competition still has some potential if someone can figure out how to do something similar with an even smaller USB connector.

Thanks to [JohnU] for the tip!

Trinteract, a small space mouse, operating in Blender.

Trinteract Mini Space Mouse Does It In 3D

January 17, 2025 by Kristina Panos 17 Comments

We’re not sure how we managed to miss this one, but better late than never, right? This is Trinteract, a 3-DOF input device that’s both open-source and Arduino compatible. There’s even a neat 3D-printed clip to add it to the side of your laptop.

Imagine navigating 2D and 3D environments, or flying around in Minecraft with ease. [Görkem]’s custom PCB features a Hall effect sensor which picks up readings from the magnet embedded in the bottom of the joystick. You can use any magnetic object as input. In the video below the break, [Görkem] shows a 3D-printed sphere with a disc magnet trapped inside as an alternative. The super-neat part is that the thing moves around entirely on flexures. You know how much we love flexures around here.

[Görkem] has written up a fantastic guide for those who must have one of their own. As a bonus, the guide details the background and thought process behind the design, which we love to see.

Don’t like magnets? This space mouse uses an accelerometer and a spring.

Continue reading “Trinteract Mini Space Mouse Does It In 3D” →

Updated Mouse Ring Does It With A Joystick

December 10, 2024 by Kristina Panos 9 Comments

Have you ever wished for easy mouse controls to go along with your VR headset experience? Or maybe you just want a cooler way to mouse in general. In any case, look no further than [rafgaj78]’s Bluetooth Mouse Ring project.

This is version two, which of course comes with several improvements over version one. The biggest change is from tactile buttons to a joystick input. [rafgaj78] also did away with the power switch, using deep-sleep mode instead. Version two is easier to assemble and offers improved ergonomics, as well as a range of ring sizes.

Like the first version, this ring runs on a Seeed Xiao nRF52840 and is programmed in CircuitPython. There are two modes to choose from. In one mode, the joystick does left and right mouse click and wheel up and down, while the push action recovers the micro from deep sleep. In the other mode, the joystick axis is a mouse pointer mover, and you push down to left click.

We really like this sleek design, and [rafgaj78] has great instructions if you want to build your own. This isn’t the first cool mouse ring we’ve seen, and it certainly won’t be the last.

Custom Mouse Rocks Neat Thumbstick Design

November 21, 2024 by Lewin Day 20 Comments

A mouse is just two buttons, and a two-dimensional motion tracking system, right? Oh, and a scroll wheel. And a third button. And…now you’re realizing that mice can be pretty complicated. [DIY Yarik] proves that in spades with his impressive—and complex—mouse build. The only thing is, you might argue it isn’t really a mouse.

The inspiration for the mouse was simple. [Yarik] wanted something that was comfortable to use. He also wanted a mouse that wouldn’t break so often—apparently, he’s had a lot of reliability issues with mice in recent years. Thus, he went with a custom 3D-printed design with a wrist rest at the base. This allows his hand to naturally rest in a position where he can access multiple buttons and a central thumbstick for pointing. In fact, there’s a secondary scroll control and a rotary dial as well. It’s a pretty juicy control surface. Code is up on GitHub.

The use of a thumbstick is controversial—some might exclaim “this is not a mouse!” To them, I say, “Fine, call it a pointing device.” It’s still cool, and it look like a comfortable way to interface with a computer.

We’ve seen some other neat custom mice over the years, too, like this hilarious force-feedback mouse. Video after the break. Continue reading “Custom Mouse Rocks Neat Thumbstick Design” →