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A Guy Made a Computer Mouse That is Also a Functional Laptop (vice.com)
A YouTube user who goes by Electronic Grenade has designed a computer mouse that is also a functional laptop. From a report: As detailed in a video published on Sunday, the computer mouse computer consists of a 3d-printed mouse, a Raspberry Pi microcontroller, a small keyboard, and a handful of components that were taken from a normal computer mouse. "Even though the screen is attached to the mouse, the sensitivity of the mouse makes it not that hard to follow along with what is happening on the screen," Electronic Grenade said in the video. Nevertheless, the mouse does have its faults. According to Electronic Grenade, a few resource intensive applications will occasionally cause the mouse computer to crash.
Nice. We've seen this idea already with retro gaming systems (entire console/logic is inside the controller), so doing it for a PC is just another step.
Next up: Some guy makes a keyboard that is also a Beowulf cluster :-)
I'm assuming there's a RP Zero in there and its a single board computer that runs linux. Strange that it crashes though, it might need a heatsink and some cooling vents.
...had it come out prior to smart phones. Maybe.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?
Old quote. Just because you are different doesn't mean you are useful.
I'll grant that this is clever but it's hard to see any practical value in it. Obviously done for entertainment. This is what annoys me about a lot of so called Maker culture. They spend huge brainpower on things that are obviously useless. Nothing wrong with entertaining yourself building something just because you can but maybe take a tiny bit of effort to actually solve a real problem while you are at it? This is like the old calculator watches from my youth - got you geek cred to wear one but they were utterly useless to actually try and use.
And that was almost 14 years ago:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
Functional computer maybe. Not sure I would call it a laptop.
This is the type of Slashdot Article that we got back in the late 1990's. About some crazy guy trying to make something just because he could. Never mind it was practical, or profitable. Just a cool thing to do. Just like the Potato Powered Web Server back in the year 2000. Completely pointless, but just a cool idea.
And you know what, just because the idea is silly, there were probably a lot of good learning events taken place in such an exercise.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I bet it runs Emacs.
Table-ized A.I.
Nicely done and I was surprised at how usable it was (for the most part) - the keyboard is what I would consider the biggest kludge and I would think there would be better ways to implement it.
The big question is what types of applications would this be good for? I could see it being good for point of sales as well as teaching. Adding a bar code scanner would probably be a prerequisite though. While it wouldn't be that usable for most people, I suspect that there are some situations where a computer/input device like this would be ideal.
I've seen worse/dumber things that people have put together.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
This is simply a case mod for a raspberry pi. This should be on indestructible or hack-a-day, but not here. This also is the most useless thing I have ever seen. Who wants to look at a screen when moving it?
Uh like how about social justice? Bing? Duh? Of course it gets a lot more expensive once a heat sink goes in. And I agree with the other poster. A readable screen would be a prerequisite. Did they post that link yet or are we just still pretending and hanging around in our underwear browsing internet porn?
Because clever but pointless hacks are fun?
Why do clever fun hacks have to be pointless? There are plenty of clever and fun things you can do that solve real problems. They don't have to be world changing but they don't have to be dumpster food either.
And they build skills that eventually can be used to solve "real" problems.
You can build skills to solve "real" problems by working on those real problems.
Why paint a picture when you can just snap a photo? Art is good because it's different, and this project is more like art than technology.
This is absolutely useless. In video he mentions noone has ever made such a thing... Well it's because it's absolutely useless and absurd. Instead of building crap use that brainpower to build something useful.
Insert Ian Malcolm quote from Jurassic Park.
The mountain by its trees weakens itself. Fat that fuels a fire fries itself. A cinnamon tree can be eaten and so it is cut down. Everyone knows the the value of being useful. No one knows the value of being useless.
- The Madman of K'ieh
Fuck your irrelevant judgement.
A Broadcom chip lip the BCM2385 is a micro controller. A RaspberryPi is a single board computer. I guess the news may be for nerds but it isn't written by nerds.
Given that mice and trackpads are the two major types of pointing devices, technically this isn't point-less.
Before I read the article, I thought this might be about someone who fit all the brains of a PC into a regular wireless mouse. That could have been pretty cool, if you just paired a wireless Bluetooth keyboard to it and the only cord coming from it was a combo video connection to a display and power for the mouse/computer itself.
It would limit you to your external display choices, but you could probably make the only mouse cord a Thunderbolt or USB-C cable that could provide video signal to the display and also draw the power needed from it to run the computer-mouse itself?