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Turn an Optical Mouse into a Scanner

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the because-you-can dept.

John H. Doe writes "This student was bored one day, so he decided to see what the world looked like from the bottom of his optical mouse. He jury rigged a few wires to his parallel port and wrote a program to take a look. And seeing as how one thing a mouse does is to detect motion, made it into a ghetto b&w handscanner. "

4 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Well by Z00L00K · · Score: 5, Interesting
    At least this hack is a little funny. I have been wondering about a mouse with force-feedback and then I can't wait until I see the mouse wander over the edge of the table when infected by some strange virus...

    What resolution is it possible to get with the laser mice that you can get?

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    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  2. Re:But the real question is... by pesc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Or turn a camera-equipped mobile phone into an optical mouse? Preferrably with bluetooth support using the built-in phone BT chip! It should only be some programming to get it to work, right? Finally a sensible use for cameraphones.

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    )9TSS
  3. what ever happened to hand scanners by wcb4 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Its a shame really. Hand scanners seemed to ahve peaked in popularity before their time. I understand that they were popular because they were a lot cheaper to build that flatbeds, and as flatbeds came down in price, the hand scanners died away. Seems perfectly reasonable since the handscanner was a pretty ppor match for a desktop computer anyway. The only problem with this was that as the price of flatbeds fell, so did the price of laptops, now a lot of folks have laptops, and hand scanners would be perfect to throw in the laptop bag.... If you are in a library or somehwhere and need a quick scan, the hand scanner would have been perfect. But I have not been able to find a single color hand scanner that will run with XP, which is what I run on my laptop. If I could find one, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. The last time I needed a scan of something when I was not at home, I ended up puling out my digital camera (which I had with me for another reason, and snapping a picture. This was not the ideal situation, but it worked for what I needed. How often do you have a good digital camera with you (not the crappy one in your cell phone)

    Does anyone know of a handscanner compatible with XP? I'd still like to have one.

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    I reject your reality ... and substitute my own.
  4. Optical Mouse Chips by Stigmata669 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You can use the chips for optical navigation too. I played around with one for an introductory robotics class, here.

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    Yawn.