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Electronics => Electronics => Topic started by: Trumpkin on November 14, 2007, 11:33:46 AM

Title: hacking computer Mice
Post by: Trumpkin on November 14, 2007, 11:33:46 AM

This may be a stupid question but is there any way you could hack a computer mouse's encoder so you could use the mouse as a back wheel or something? 

Title: Re: hacking computer Mice
Post by: Steve Joblin on November 14, 2007, 11:39:46 AM

like this?  http://imakeprojects.com/Projects/seeing-eye-mouse/

Title: Re: hacking computer Mice
Post by: Trumpkin on November 14, 2007, 11:49:41 AM

Yeah, I think thats what I'm looking for. Thanks!

Title: Re: hacking computer Mice
Post by: Trumpkin on November 14, 2007, 04:08:59 PM

Does anybody know if you can connect the mouse to a microcontroller without an extra board?

Title: Re: hacking computer Mice
Post by: robonoob on February 07, 2008, 10:30:00 AM

Quote from: Trumpkin on November 14, 2007, 04:08:59 PM

Does anybody know if you can connect the mouse to a microcontroller without an extra board?

yea i would be interested in the same thing... i want to attach a mouse to my arduino board to read some infromation from it :)

Title: Re: hacking computer Mice
Post by: krich on February 07, 2008, 10:02:49 PM

You can.  Now, having said that, it's not like just plugging into the USB/PS2 port.

The heart of the optical mouse is an ADNS chip from Agilent/Avago.  Aside from a couple chips from ST Micro, Avago is the only manufacturer of this kind of chip.

To keep it simple, the interface between your microcontroller and the ADNS chip (depending on the model) is either a dual Quadrature interface or a simplex/duplex serial interface, or both.  With the quadrature interface, you can get the DeltaX and DeltaY values.  With the serial interface, you can pull position information, framegrabs from the sensor itself, monitor surface quality, and more.

Here's the ADNS-2610 datasheet. (http://cp.literature.agilent.com/litweb/pdf/5988-9774EN.pdf)

I'm working on building my own carrier board for a similar chip (ADNS-2051) with a customized optical lens system so that I can place the sensor more than 2.5mm from the ground and use it instead of wheel encoders for positioning.

Title: Re: hacking computer Mice
Post by: rargus on February 13, 2008, 07:58:01 AM

Have a look at http://www.awce.com/pak11.htm They also have a board with this IC on it and a similar one for the keyboard. I have the keyboard one and you can force it to read a mouse, although it looks like the newer chip is easier to use with a mouse.