Maze-solving Robo Mouse

October 29, 2010 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

Looking for something to build that will be challenging and interesting to laypersons at the same time? Take some inspiration from this maze-solving robot mouse. It take the idea of a line-following robot, and makes it infinitely more cool. The tiny rover uses sensors to map out a physical maze. Once it figure it out, you put it back at the beginning for a speed run to the finish. We’ve embedded the video below showing the whole process. Looks like the speed-run is completed in just under five seconds.

Now that you’ve enjoyed a virtual mouse in a real maze, check out a real mouse in a virtual maze.

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Use A 3D Mouse With Eagle CAD

October 12, 2010 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

[Sebastian] made a 3D mouse work with Eagle CAD. He was inspired after using a 3DConnexion device to manipulate the views in a copy of Solid Edge 3D CAD modeling software. The system uses the 3D mouse in one hand with the regular mouse in the other.

It turns out that 3DConnecxion offers a lot of tools to get their devices working with your software. [Sebastian] downloaded the .NET example and modified it to read in data from the device. With the use of hot-keys he manages to get zoom, pan, and centering to work (see for yourself after the break). The only drawback to his implementation is that he can’t pan while dragging parts. But that’s just a small issue waiting for you to find a solution.

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USB Ports Hidden Inside Gaming Mouse

October 2, 2010 by Mike Szczys 26 Comments

[Gigawatts] built a pair of USB ports into his mouse and there’s enough room to plug-in small USB drives and dongles. After seeing Thursday’s storage mouse hack he decided to tip us off about the post.

He started with a Logitech G5 gaming mouse. The wireless version of this mouse has a battery pack, but on the corded version this space is used for a weight cartridge. Since he didn’t really care about that feature he ditched the weights, added a USB hub inside, and positioned the dual ports as seen in the photo. The void is deep enough for the mouse to function normally while hosting medium to small-sized devices. This is a fantastic solution that’s at least as impressive as Apple adding USB ports to a keyboard. We’d love to see it as a factory option.

Update: Video after the break

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USB Mouse With Storage Added

September 30, 2010 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

[Thice] wanted to try his hand at incorporating a USB driving into other devices. He chose to add storage to his USB mouse but didn’t want to alter the factory look provided by a color-changing LED inside. To make things fit he ended up cutting a good portion of a USB hub’s circuit board off and placing it beneath the mouse circuitry. You can see the board from the thumb drive wedged into one end of the case in the image above.

He sees this as a way of hiding data in plain sight. This is true, and it’s along the same lines we’ve seen before with a WiFi dongle in a mouse, or the thumbdrive in a controller hacks. To be truly hidden we’d like to see someone incorporate a microcontroller that monitors the mouse buttons for a certain code, and then toggles the voltage to the USB storage. This would simulate plugging and unplugging the drive, hiding it virtually as well as physically.

Woot Lights And Mice Transplants

September 29, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 6 Comments

[Nathan Long] sent in two fairly simple mods he’s been working on. The first is the control of Woot-off Lights via LPT port. A computer checks Woot for the Woot-off logo, and if the logo is spotted, on go the lights. It’s really just a twist on the LED/Arduino email message system, but the creativity is nice.

His other modification is the stuffing of a Microsoft Intellimouse inside of a Logitech Wingman. With the goal of giving the old PS/2 mouse USB capabilities and removing the terrible ball. For those that are asking themselves “why bother? Terrible ergonomics, no scroll wheel, etc.” [Nathan] claims it’s for Quake 2 nostalgia, to each their own we suppose.

Input Device Using LED And Four Photoresistors

September 22, 2010 by Mike Szczys 38 Comments

[Julien] built an input device that uses reflected light detected by some photoresistors. Placing your hand above the device will reflect light from the LED back down onto the cadmium-sulfide sensors. The resistance of those sensors is read by four ADC pins on a Teensy microcontroller and translated to mouse movements. In the video after the break you can see that this works rather well in controlling the cursor. The source code is available on pastebin but we’re also going to host the code for posterity.

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Texas Instruments Watch Claims It’s A Computer Mouse

August 7, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 54 Comments

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDL3JRG_zrs%5D

[Jack Toole] and his team [Aaron King] and [Libo He] sent in their computer interface dubbed the Chronos Flying Mouse. The video above explains the concept very thoroughly, but we’ll reiterate some of the highlights here. The project uses a Chronos EZ430 with its accelerometers to wirelessly transmit delta positions of the user’s wrist. Add a little open source software and you have a regular PC mouse, a video game joystick, a game wheel, and a few other different devices in one. We just love the suave feeling of snapping to click.