A challenge for /diy/

[Anonymous No.367685]

Okay /diy/ I have a challenge for you, pic related.

I challenge you to turn one of these (any brand provided it has a USB cable attached) into a pen similar to a tablet pen but without a tablet being needed to write with it by pressing a button and dragging, wheel not necessary.

Should you accept this challenge you will be doing a great favor to man by being the first.

If someone did this already, too bad because I didn't see your achievement on the first two pages of any google search so it doesn't exist.

[Anonymous No.367689]

>>367685

So... lemme get this straight. You want laser tracking bit on the end of a stick with a cord sticking out the other end, and a button somewhere on the stick to click with?

[Anonymous No.367691]

so, you don't want to buy one of those digital artist tablets?

[Anonymous No.367693]

>>367689
Exactly, The superiority of it would be that you could write anywhere on almost any surface.

[Anonymous No.367695]

>>367693
It wouldn't be as precise though.

[Anonymous No.367696]

>>367693

I dunno how well that would end up working, since the laser bit on all the mouses I see are angled, so it might have to stay at a certain angle to work, probably making the pen very awkward to hold

[Anonymous No.367699]

how about instead of using the laser on the mouse, we bend the rules and buy a cheap laser pointer so it can be used at any angle, and combine that with the mouse hardware (I have no clue how laser or optical mouses work)

[Anonymous No.367701]

>>367699
>>367696
The angled part is actually the light, the laser goes strait down and is invisible.

[Anonymous No.367704]

>>367701

Ah, I suppose that makes sense. What purpose does the light serve then?

[Anonymous No.367718]

>>367704
It allows the laser part to "see" what it is on and whether or not it is moving.

[Anonymous No.367739]

So you want to diy yourself one of these?

http://www.geniusnet.com/wSite/ct?xItem=47513&ctNode=105

[Anonymous No.367882]

They actually use a LED not a laser. There is NO LASER in the darn thing. That part is a market ploy.

The LED lights up the area and a camera digitizes whatever the mouse sits on. By comparing the bitmaps before and after, the mouse knows the motion associated with that.

[Anonymous No.367885]

>>367685
http://www.gizmag.com/go/6922/

[Anonymous No.367886]

>>367882
are you saying there are no mice with laser diodes???

[hecocool No.367891]

This is actually an incredible idea, hope you figure it out.

[Anonymous No.367926]

What about:
1) taking apart the laser part of the mouse (To make the pen smaller and easier to hold) We would have two parts now.
2) Put a long wire between the laser part and the mouse.
3) Stick the laser part to a pencil (being conservative with the angle if needed, some tests would be need to be made)

With that, you would have something like this:
[Computer]------[Mouse without laser]-----[Pencil with the laser]
(the --- is the wire)
I think that it could work, next weekend I'll try to do it, I'll make a new thread if this one dies if I'm able to do it.

[Anonymous No.367942]

>>367886

99% of the questions on /diy/ are directly discussed, if not outright answered, on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_mouse#Laser_mice

laser diodes are LEDs, just complex ones that emit coherent light.

very low power red/infrared LED lasers are super cheap. the coherence is needed for the mouse to "see" detail to detect motion.

milliwatt lasers are cheap. but when i was atalented /diy/er LASER! OMFG LASER!!!! was like screaming killer fuckofuck hi tech. now it's like, "LASER!" stamped on a 99 cent discount toy from china in a blister pak at walmart.

LASER! OMG!

[Anonymous No.367943]

>>367942

repro'd model of the first ever laser. it's bullshit, actually, as i'm old enough to remember the mid 60's and i am fairly certain that the *first* first was an optical bench-top lashup. this is probably the "first" packaged one. (check out pics of the first transistor, apparently, that model is well known and it looks hilariously awful)

http://spie.org/x39920.xml

if you want to know near-alien fkn high tech, google 'MASER', Luis Alvarez dragged a maser amplifier into a conference room and demonstrated it detecting the *microwave* radiation given off by a cigarette as it was sucked on. (what's most amazing about that is that it was OK to smoke cigarettes in an MIT conference room)

[Anonymous No.367980]

I actually did this about 10 years ago, before the chan existed. I toyed with the exact same idea, only after a bit of tinkering I found it was pretty hard to fit it all into a pen form without fashioning an entirely new PCB. Being a 13 year old, that obviously didn't happen.

I did however have a bit of soldering knowledge, and what I settled with was removing the little "shoe" component that houses the LED of an optical mouse, and attached it to the bottom of a normal pen. I did the same with the tiny switch under the left clicker, placing it directly under where my thumb would rest on the pen (somewhere on the bottom 1/4, on the left side). I ran wires through the hollow pen from both components and back up to their respective places on the actual PCB, which I gutted from the mouse housing and instead wrapped in a cloth pouch and made it to attach to the back of my hand via velcro.

It was clumsy, and I suspect there was an actual bit of lag from having moved the "eye" of the mouse 6-7 inches away from the actual PCB. And like another suggested, it had to be held at the angle in which the "shoe" was created in order for it to sit flat. It took some adjusting until I permanently affixed it in a way that correlated to how I held my pen.

It worked, crudely, but I soon learned that I had just as much control with a normal mouse than I did with it, so it eventually got junked.

Looking back, if I could change things, it would be to have a component between the "eye" at the bottom and the actual pen, that would allow the shaft to be bent and twisted in a variety of different angles to suit the holding angle of the user. A cleaner design would certainly be more reasonable given the size of the components in modern mice, possibly to the point where all of the circuitry could in fact be put into the pen instead of a pack on the back of the hand.

Alleviate the lag issues, and you'd have exactly what you wanted.

I wish I had pictures to contribute, but it can be done.

[Anonymous No.368000]

>>367980
http://hackaday.com/2012/10/16/magic-finger-input-device-is-a-camera-on-your-finger-tip/

[Anonymous No.368003]

It does sound cool. Most of the work would be in the software, not hardware I'd reckon.

You could give the end of the pen a joint to pivot as needed to avoid having to write in a fixed angle all the time, which I could imagine becoming difficult and tedious. Then run the wire through the pen so it will be (somewhat) kept out of your way when writing.

[Watchman !!YIeo68+F4mg No.368008]

I just considered this as an alternative to a graphic tablet, but one thing it will lack is pressure sensitivity--which is arguably one of the more important features of a tablet.

[Anonymous No.368117]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWRdE88_sQ8

[Anonymous No.368142]

I have an idea! What if we completely drop the mouse idea.

My buddy is hugely addicted to flight sim games. He downloaded a program from the internet that tracks head movement and moves the screen around in the game to make it that much closer to reality. He uses a standard webcam, the program, and a set of glasses with a tiny red flag tapped dead center (atop a toothpick) as his entire head tracking system.

First, google-fu a head tracking program. Next mount a webcam, pen length away from the screen, at a 90 degree angle. lastly you go out and buy a cheap stylus from Staples with the change in your pocket, put a wad of brightly colored tape on the end (to be the exact point of tracking), and enjoy your new artist's tablet for $30 and 20 minutes of your time. ... the clicking feature is up to someone else to incorporate lol.