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Your Entire PC In a Mouse
slash-sa writes: A Polish software and hardware developer has created a prototype computer which is entirely housed within a mouse. Dubbed the Mouse-Box, it works like a conventional mouse, but contains a processor, flash storage, an HDMI connection, and Wi-Fi connectivity. It is connected to a monitor via the HDMI interface and connects to an Internet connection through standard Wi-Fi.
...on the keyboard...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I don't know about everyone else, but my hand leaves crap on my mouse that needs to be cleaned regularly. I wouldn't want that stuff getting into the mouse and sticking to the circuits...
I guess as long as they make it really easy to open up and clean, this could be a very cool idea.
This is clearly not intended to be a gaming device. When I get pissed off and wing my mouse across the room in frustration, I don't want to destroy my entire computer in the process.
Mouse will be hot (Not very hot but enough to sweat more)
I call it Apple II. 1 MHz 8-bit CPU, 4kB RAM.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I'd think this would be easier to implement in the keyboard. More space. Mostly stationary.
I say, "Why not?"
It's a crazy idea. I don't think it's going to fly particularly well, but hey, if they want to try something unique and crazy, I'm not going to stop them.
I mean, ten years ago if you told me that one of the best ways to stream stuff to my TV was through a stick the size of a zagnut bar that plugged directly into my HDMI socket, I would've told you you were nuts.
Bring on the crazy ass designs. Let's see where this goes.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Do you know that you left yourself wide open* for male anatomy jokes there?
* Not intended to be a "goat_" joke.
Table-ized A.I.
An entire PC in a phone?
Why? Well, a couple of reasons. First, if you're like me, your hand will be on the mouse a lot causing it to be warm. Second, mice get abused and break too easily.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
That doesn't sound very comfortable - an HDMI cable to the display constantly dangling around as you move the mouse. Plus I have enough trouble keeping HDMI cables connected without them moving constantly; the connectors don't have good interlocks.
The monitor is stationary, needs a cable, has lots of space to embed components. You could even give it flashy solid color and name it after a fruit.
Nobody's done that before...
Pros:
Cute
Cons:
Too heavy to move around
No bluetooth for keyboard (I suppose you can get one of those USB dongle ones)
HDMI cable restricts movement
Can't throw out and get a new one when the mouse part breaks
Forget upgradability
Forget peripherals
How hot does this thing get? Sound uncomfortable for your hand.
Nope, this is all a joke. Would never pass usability testing.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
an HDMI cable to the display constantly dangling around as you move the mouse.
Once upon a time, mice use to be wired.
Before the era where everybody uses mouse that talk over bluetooth or some proprietary variation of Wireless USB and that uses batteries that die every once in a while, there used to be a period where USB and PS/2 cable dangling from the mouse to the main machine where the norm.
And nobody found it problematic back then.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Yeah, this almost as good an idea as "wireless printers..."
No screen on the mouse? Lame.
The mouse becomes defective i.e. broken wheels and buttons?
Would you have to hook a mouse up to the mouse?
There's really only space on a mouse for one wire coming out, so if that wire is HDMI it'll be annoying to hook this thing up to a keyboard.
On the other hand, if they built this thing with a USB-C port then it could be pretty neat. You could sit down at a desk with a USB 3.1 Hub, a keyboard, and a monitor and just plug in your mouse and be ready to go. The USB 3.1 cable would happily handle power, video, and the USB keyboard.
On the other hand, it'd probably make more sense to just have a regular mouse at the desk and hook up your cellphone or something to be the computer.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Leave it to the polish to make a wireless mouse that needs an HDMI output. Would have been much better with WiDI.
Sounds like vaporware. Where would it's power come from? From the HDMI cable? It'd be easier (i.e. better) to have the processor in the monitor or in the keyboard (both of which have already been done before). Kudos for thinking outside the box, but this seems to be a project to do not because it makes sense, but rather "just because I can".
You see, the computer is in the mouse, the mouse is in the monitor, and the monitor is in the computer. Gottit?
Table-ized A.I.
If you look closely during the "innards" part of the video, there's a subtext that says "Battery (optional)". To me, this means the product lacks a battery for things like CMOS, which most people think of as "storing BIOS settings" but plays one very critical role: system date/time (e.g. RTC). It amazes me how often people forget this critical system component.
Remember: the MouseBox is being advertised as effectively "a replacement for a portable laptop", which means it's intended to have long-standing files on it, which means properly retaining system date/time is incredibly important.
While it's perfectly fine to do NTP every time the system boots, that's also fairly ridiculous -- there's no guarantee that's possible (the network you connect to may not have Internet access, or have a very restrictive outbound-filtering firewall). And if the mouse actually does some kind of system suspend when it's unplugged from a video device, then you've got a conundrum on your hands: you're going to try to de-hibernate and restore where all the apps left off, except all that has to block (i.e. wait) for NTP to finish because otherwise you don't have any concept of how much time has transpired between standby and resume. Inclusion of a battery and good timecounter hardware solves a lot of this (sure, your time may be off by a few seconds, but that's better than 45 years); and likewise you can't "reliably" run ntpd (or any other daemon that does good timekeeping) without good timecounter hardware. It's even important for things like web browsers, where things like HTTP 304 Not Modified are involved (yes you can use ETags, which are better in some regards, but now you have to start doing checksums/MD5s/hashes of every single file which is slower than asking the kernel for time).
We've already learned this lesson in embedded devices (well, us developers have -- Broadcom and others seem to keep making products that lack batteries, sigh): the lack of a battery has been the source of pain when it comes to things like cable modems (events show epoch-esque dates, not to mention don't handle DST (I'm looking at you Motorola!)) and routers (where both logs and proper timekeeping are important, and many consumer routers have awful timecounting hardware, if any at all). I cannot imagine using a workstation (e.g. laptop) without a CMOS battery; you can't treat a MouseBox the same way you would treat, say, an electric razor. Laptops and netbooks (the easy majority) all contain batteries...
I'm curious how folks in the actual commercial embedded industry deal with this situation?
Get a life
Maybe one with an RF adapter for display on old television sets as well?
That's a tiny connection so it's going to have a thin mini-HDMI cable plugged into it with maybe full sized HDMI at the other end. In mechanical terms that will make it very similar to a normal USB mouse.
You could do this easily with a Raspberry Pi ARM, especially the A+ (200mA) or something a bit larger like the Banana Pi (350mA) or for x86-64 devotees, an ECS Liva (550mA@5V).
I use these and form factor is the issue -- the tiny things become like octopus hubs with a number of cables in & out. Some like the HDMI are fairly heavy and stiff. The little board/box gets lifted and controlled by the cords.
I'd never want a mouse with those cables tying it down. The Chromecast-style HDMI stick (one coming from Intel) is a bit better, but what happens when your HDMI port is upside-down or inaccessible for all the other cables? Then you need to find a rare MF extention cable or FF coupler. HDMI does not provide enough 5V power (50 mA IIRC) to power a CPU.
Clock speed is 1.4 GHz, just over double the speed of RasPi. (That doesn't mean it's only 2x as fast, since it's probably a slightly newer ARM core, but it's unlikely to be 20x as fast, even if it's doing something like Odroid's quad-core ARM.)
It's definitely cute, but I'd think the Chromecast HDMI/USB-stick format, or something a bit larger but still pocket-sized, makes more sense.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
Why put that computer into a keyboard when you can put it into a joystick? (Jeri Ellsworth's C64-Direct-to-TV)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Is it a laptop? A desktop? A mouse-pad-top?
A smart mouse? Will it try to take over the world?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Use the mouse as a both a cell phone and a windows pc mouse when you get home. Wireless to the monitor and keyboard and were all set.
You can do a lot on a computer with just a keyboard. You can't do much on a computer with just a mouse.
Why not put the whole computer in the power source form factor? It' almost there already: http://venturebeat.com/2015/01...
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
There are situations where using your own computer is forbidden.
What a stupid bit of advertising here. It puts off resellers as the product is marketed to circumvent procedures and hence to engage in illicit activities. And in cases where circumventing procedures is beneficial to the common good, activists will already have spotted that opportunity.
I admit that I'm not a marketing guru. But why not elegantly appeal to people wanting to travel light for instance?
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I herd you like mouses, so we put your PC into a mouse, so you can connect your mouse to your mouse
... hiding FB from a boss? (the first use case shown in the video).
A smartphone is already a much better tool for that
Sounds like a good hand warmer
but I hate mice.
I really liked that the videos first argument was that if you aren't allowed to use your own computer, this one is easy to hide!
It will maybe the year of woman in IT when you put a PC inside a dildo. But then be careful not to own more than 6 at the same time.
"The Brain"
So... what are we going to do today?
I would use it with chromecast... so it'd be wireless. Add in a bluetooth keyboard and you are good to go.
Tech support people have finally almost convinced the user that giant box was the computer. Now you're going to put it in the mouse? You monsters.
Not to be ethnist (I'm also a slav, though southern slav as opposed to Poland chiefly being northern slav), but am I the only one who's not surprised that this was a Polish design? This goes right in line with standard fare Polack jokes, for good or bad.
They lead out with showing how you can deceive your boss into thinking you're working using the Mouse Box, and they finish off with "the only problem you're going to have to cope with is what hand you're going to use"?
I'm glad you can can fold your mouse pad into a box, I was wondering where I was going to find a box for my Box.
It might surprise the "Monster Cable crowd", but HDMI cables don't necessarily need to be thick enough to be able to carry 16A current.
In fact, I have a flat HDMI cable which very thin and flexible, enough so because it's a roll-up. And it works nicely this way. That's already a cable that won't induce much more drag than your old-school PS/2 cable.
(And there are ultra thin sub-2mm cables on the market too).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
this mouse needs to be tethered to a HDMI cable (farely stiff)
It might surprises you, but don't trust "Monster Cable": you don't actually need a cable as thick as the charger of a Tesla car to carry a digital video signal.
Yes, most HDMI cable are stiff. No, that's not a requirement. Thiner and/or flatter, and more flexible HDMI cable to exist.
and a USB if you want any other device attached like a keyboard.
I was actually surprised that there are USB host connectors on this thing. I would have expected it to use bluetooth keyboard if any one needs one. (And I imagine it more used for none-keyboard tasks).
Nano wireless receivers for the occasionnal keyboard need, and other similar USB nano devices, might do the trick.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]