Pep Up Your House Cat’s Boring Wintertime Life

January 2, 2012 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

With winter upon us, and all the windows shut, [Garfield] and [Socks] can get a little restless. But [Dino] is determined to keep his furry friends entertained through the cold dark months. He hit the junk box, and used some interesting fabrication techniques to build the Chase-a-Mouse motorized cat toy.

The toy is popular with the cats because it incorporates two traditionally satisfying features; something to chase, and an obstacle to chase it around. The base of the unit is a long plank which is held up from the floor by a couple of inches. The loop of rope which spans the board’s length has a mouse attached to it with about six inches of string. When the motor is flipped on it bounces and jerks its way around the circuit, darting in and out of the space below the base.

As you can see in the video after the break the motor is a bit loud. [Dino] used the sweeper motor from a Roomba for this. It might freak the kitties out at first, but curiosity will get the better of them eventually. It’s a quick build, and we love the drill-turned-lathe that is used make the wooden pulley for the system.

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Hackaday Links: September 28, 2011

September 28, 2011 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

Disposable coffee maker

[Sepehr] didn’t have a coffee maker, and the local coffee shops were all out of joe. He got his fix by making a drip coffee maker out of disposable cups and knives.

Flexible braille display

Thin film technology is being developed to help the visually impaired. This flexible OLED display has embedded muscle cells which create a braille display. [Thanks Aaron]

Printable iPhone tripod mount

Looking to make those iPhone videos a little more stable, and the pictures a little less blurry? Try out this printable tripod mount that [Chris] came up with.

Arduino macro photos

Speaking of photographs, [Daniel] wrote in to share some macro pictures he took of an Arduino. They’re sure to be of interest to those readers who love everything Arduino.

Carpeting a mouse

Add a unique texture to your mouse by covering part of the body with fabric. The lower half of the mouse case above is covered in a carpet-like material [translated]. [Thanks Clicker]

Interfacing With A PS/2 Mouse

September 24, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

[David] sent in his implementation of reading a PS/2 mouse with a PIC microcontroller and some LED displays. Of course, this follows hot on the heels of using a PIC with a PS/2 keyboard so now might be the time to start digging out your old peripherals out of your junk pile.

[David] began his project trying to figure out how to connect a mouse to his breadboard. After hacking the plastic off a PS/2 mouse extension cord, he wired everything up according to the pinout. Programming the PIC to understand PS/2 commands was a little strange. [David] is used to having his microcontrollers provide the clock signal. The PS/2 protocol is a bit strange as the peripheral sets the clock. Since PS/2 is a bidirectional protocol, the mouse also accepts commands. The host – [David]’s PIC – must send the mouse a command to start sending movement data.

Because USB keyboards and mice are backwards compatible with PS/2 ports, [David] tried out a few USB mice with a USB to PS/2 adapter. Every attempt at using a USB mouse failed. Strangely, when a Bluetooth mouse was tried (via Bluetooth to USB to PS/2), everything worked perfectly. Check out [David]’s PIC mouse demo after the break.

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Mouse And HDD Combo Show Off Your Data Gluttony

June 16, 2011 by Mike Nathan 24 Comments

databot_mouse

So we know you’ve got a lot of porn on your computer, but just how much is a lot? This concept mouse and hard drive combo aims to show you just how much digital junk you have acquired through physical feedback.

The DataBot mouse looks like a typical run of the mill scroll mouse that you might get with a new computer. Inside however, the designers have added a small servo which alters the ease with which the ball moves. The more files you have stuffed into the folder you are moving around, the more the mouse resists, giving you a sense of the physical “weight” of your computer’s contents.

The DataBot hard drive gives you a sense of how full your computer is by growing and shrinking based on space usage. During file transmissions the hard drive blinks its LEDs to indicate how fast or slowly your files are moving. When the inevitable file access error occurs, the LEDs switch to a bright red hue and the drive shakes to indicate there is a problem afoot.

With the price of data storage decreasing by the day, it’s easy to get lost in a glut of information without realizing just how much data you have. This is definitely an interesting way to get a different look at your data consumption.

Check out the videos below to see the pair in action.

[via Dvice]

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We’ve Got A Real Bone To Pick With This Mouse

June 16, 2011 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

Finally, there’s a way you can feel like a real bad-ass while you’re formatting those TPS reports. It’s all thanks to this computer mouse built inside the skull of a dog. [Shannon Larratt] dug through his collection of skulls and came up with this one because it fits nicely in the palm of your hand.

Before you get too grossed out, this is not actually part of an animal’s body like another notable mouse hack that comes to mind. [Shannon] started with the skull of a small dog, making a mold for the pieces used in the finished version above. He was quite creative when fitting the electronic parts inside of his reproduction. He pulled the PCB from a $10 Logitech mouse and had no trouble getting it to fit into the base of the skull. But when it came to the buttons he ended up engineering a couple of rockers and used a belt to reposition the scroll-wheel. Not wanting to lose the middle-click feature there’s an additional lever for that functionality. We’d also like to compliment him on the quality of his write-up. Fantastic!

Vintage Peripheral Hacks Roundup

June 8, 2011 by Mike Nathan 13 Comments

A few days ago, we featured an Apple ][ USB keyboard mod, and several readers chimed in sharing their own retro conversions in the comments section. We had no idea that many of you had made similar modifications of your own, so here’s a quick roundup of what your fellow Hackaday readers have put together.

Optical Atari STM1 Mouse

atari_stm1_usb

[JJ] had a 25-year old Atari STM1 mouse sitting around and was wondering how to get it to work with his new computer. Instead of interfacing the old mouse with his computer via a custom circuit board, he gutted the STM1 and replaced the innards with those of a much newer optical mouse. He did a bit of trimming to get the new PCB to fit, aiming the optical sensor through the now-empty “ball hole”. According to [JJ] it works just as good as it looks.

ZX Spectrum USB keyboard conversion

sinclair_zx_spectrum_usb

[Lee] is a sucker for vintage hardware, and with the help of his friend [LanceR], resurrected an old Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer into a working USB keyboard. After replacing the deteriorated membrane, the pair mapped out the keyboard to figure out how the matrix was wired. With that done, they built a prototype USB interface board, which they later replaced with a proper PCB.

BBC Master Compact USB keyboard conversion

bbc_master_compact_usb

A friend of [MoJo’s] had a BBC Master Compact computer from back in the day and wanted to have the keyboard converted to USB in order to use it with certain emulators. [MoJo] gladly took on the project, stripping some of the old motherboard components out to make room for his new circuitry. He built a USB interface board around an ATMega162, and even got the old built-in speaker working properly. From the outside, the keyboard looks like it has never been touched – nice job!

Wireless Mouse Li-Poly Retrofit With USB Charging

June 6, 2011 by Mike Nathan 22 Comments

wireless_mouse_lipoly_retrofit

It’s no secret that wireless mice can eat through batteries pretty quickly. Rather than keep a fresh supply of AAs on hand at all times, [Phil] decided he would convert his mouse to use a rechargeable lithium polymer battery instead.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a cell phone battery crammed into a mouse to increase capacity, but we think this one has been done quite nicely. [Phil] managed to fit a 2.7 – 4.2v Li-Poly battery in the mouse’s palm rest, where there was a little extra empty space. The battery can be charged from any USB port via a custom-built charging module, which he constructed using a MAX1555 charge controller. Another custom-built circuit resides in the space previously occupied by the AA batteries, which uses an MC340063 DC to DC converter to drop the battery’s voltage down to the 1.25v required by the mouse.

The only part of the build that [Phil] is not pleased with is the power switch on the bottom, but since you rarely see that, we could care less. We think it is quite well done, and with a second version already in the works, we anticipate that it will get even better.

Be sure to check out [Phil’s] video tour of the hack, which you can see below.

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