Tag this one “geeky” – the Optical Mouse Cam is a simple little program that turns your optical mouse into a greyscale scanner. Turns out optical mice have small 18×18 CCD sensors in them which can be used to scan images! Be warned – there is probably no practical use for this, but it is cool nonetheless! I try to include counterintuitive and interesting hardware hacks on this site from time to time; there’s no reason to restrict the scope of Digital Media Minute to software only. As to this particular application and functionality, wouldn’t it be interesting if there was some sort of a toggle included on your optical mouse so that you could expand its capabilities to include an actual functional scanner?
Optical Mouse Cam
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice, I wonder if this could turn your mouse into a barcode reader.
Yes. Great idea! But you must write software for it. Basic program you have on this site. Bye.
Can I just make it clear that this program does not work with an unmodified mouse!!!!!
you have to cut some tracks and rewire some things to your parallel port for it to work!!!!!!
Yes you should be able to make your muse into a barcode scanner but you would meed special software and maybe you would need to change the lens on the mouse to get the scale right!!!!! otherwise it wont find the width of the bars correctly!!!!
It is not geeky, it could be VERY useful for a person with eyesight impairment (like my spouse), we have been looking for a way to enlarge text on a screen so can read more confortably again. He almost gave up reading because of an eye condition that greatly reduced his eyesight and the quality of it. Improving the quality of text (and images too) will help people with limited eyesight a lot.