What can be done from a mouse from a computer. The secret of a computer mouse What can be done from an old mouse

Have you ever wondered how things work, how they go from idea to implementation, how simple simple things are? How easy is it to make a comb? What about a computer mouse? A wooden computer mouse made of solid mahogany with an LCD screen, with its own electronic stuffing and a cable made and braided especially for her? I think you will be interested in my path, which I went through in 2.5 years of creating my mouse.

Design, construction, modeling

Since I was a complete zero in design, I approached the matter as a complete layman. I bought plasticine and began to sculpt the mouse of my dreams.

First, I made a mouse, which is perfect for my desktop work. She is a large dark gray in the photo. Then I molded a mouse that would suit me as a mobile one (dark gray small). And then I took the piece of plasticine stolen from the children to work, and my colleagues fashioned a mouse that claims to be called “folk”. It ideally fit into the hand of the majority of the male population of our team (multi-colored in the photo). And what? The result is banal and dull forms that we twitch day and night with our hands in every way. Apparently, among the three standard mice, any user will find a comfortable one. Celebration of the ideal?

As a result, a mouse was simulated behind the computer, which, from my point of view, claimed to be elegant and beautiful.

At that time I really liked her. And without thinking twice, I divided the computer model into parts. The elements of fastening and interfacing with electronic filling were thought out. Sounds simple, but hundreds of hours were actually spent painstaking work.

After that, the resulting parts were grown on a 3D machine to check the assembly.

Material - polyamide. In the hand sits well, like a glove. All parts fit together, the technological assembly also went without problems

The next step is milling in wood. I bought, probably, a dozen different species of redwoods, but I started with a sapele tree, the rest of the species are waiting in the wings.

Didn't like the design. The vertical gaps between the buttons and the case looked bad and untidy. Technological “sores” are visible when working with wood - chips and removal of the tree. Well, and most importantly - the keys did not bend, there was no click.

I thought about the design for a long time. Something was embarrassing, and there was no feeling of satisfaction. Then I realized - the mouse lacks solidity. I decided to return to the original version of the mouse, which I sculpted at the very beginning, only at a professional level and using sculptural clay. In one mouse, two design options are made. Convenient for comparison and decision making.

After receiving the final version, 3D scanning was done and the surfaces were transferred to SolidWorks.

The second model was not much better than the first. The buttons were not pressed, and it was impossible to fix this in the current model. The marriage of the model was laid down at the DNA level. Need more A complex approach with simultaneous control of both design and technology. Otherwise, nothing will work. There will be either technological excellence or good design, but not all at once. These characteristics sit on different sides of the swing. So I throw everything in the trash and start from the beginning. Sketch-design-sculpting-testing-growing and so on, but with technological control of critical parameters on the one hand, and design on the other. We are looking for the golden mean.

The third model was already made as part of the classic product design cycle. Started with a sketch.

Outlines have been drawn.

And finally, the approved design.

Plasticine layout.

3D scanner getting the surface.

computer model.

Then the process of fine-tuning the hull began. On the CNC machine, the body was sawn out, tested, refined, then sawn out again. As a result, only the tenth version of the case turned out to be operational. most big problem was to make keystrokes comfortable. As a result, in some places the thickness of the tree decreased to 0.7 mm! It took me a year to finish the hull.

The wheel and connector were also made of wood.

On the wheel I applied laser engraving with the Clickwood brand.

The eleventh version of the corps is on the way, where I will make minor changes. I also started developing a wireless version of the mouse. The wireless module is based on Bluetooth technology, the optosensor is laser. AAA batteries, 2 pieces, replaceable. When recharging, the mouse will continue to work. All the elements are located very tightly, while arranging I had to pretty rack my brains. The container for the batteries is a cavity specially cut into wooden case mice.

wooden details

Working with wood begins with the selection of wood. The boards must be of the correct geometry, have a minimum of knots and defects, and have the necessary moisture content.

At first, the boards are dried at home. At least six months.

After that, the board is sawn into bars small size, which are dried for several weeks at the place of their further processing. At all stages, the humidity is controlled by a special device. If the drying process is neglected, the wood loses its geometric stability, and the manufacture and operation of the mouse becomes impossible.

Prepared bars are processed on a CNC machine using a specially created program.

From the very beginning of the creation of the part and up to final assembly The parts are rigidly fixed on the metal fixture so that the part does not change its shape and geometric dimensions at any of the stages.

The processing of the upper part of the mouse has to be done with a jeweler's precision, since its profile is designed for a soft click and is very thin in some places. I control the pressing force with a grammeter. In normal mice, it ranges from 50 to 75 gauss. I'm trying to get 50 GS.

The tree in my project is the biggest challenge. Not only is this the most significant part of the cost, but the share of marriage here is very high. Wood is an anisotropic material. He may be led, vices may be caught, chips may occur, and just a mistake in technology finish coat can lead to the fact that the body of the mouse goes to the trash. I confess that I am still improving the processing technology, and I am not completely sure that I found the right one. For statistics: in the first batch of ten buildings up to finished product only three came. Therefore, the part of the technological chain associated with wood is critical for the cost and quality of the finished product. Above it is a constant work.

In the future, I plan to work with bone. In particular, I am already engaged in the creation of a bone wheel.

Electronic part

I developed the first mouse circuit on my own. As a sensor, I took the top-end optical sensor ADNS-3090 from Avago, the controller from Atmel, the rest of the components from branded companies such as Murata, Yageo, Geyer, Omron and Molex became the brains.

He paid special attention to the quality nutrition of the mouse, here, in my opinion, he reached the absolute with his perfectionism

First working layout.

In black, final.

There were also experiments with various buttons. I've always tried to find a quiet mouse among others. Well, since I do it myself, I decided to conduct an experiment and make such a mouse and test it in work. To do this, I replaced the clicking left and right “mics” with soft and quiet ones used for the central button (did you notice that the central button always clicks quieter?). A special version of the board was created, where all three identical "mics" were mounted.

Picked up and bought a batch of gold-plated connectors for the mouse. As usual, in China. I don't know how about better contact”, but they harmonize perfectly with the tree.

screen, firmware

Carried away by the idea of placing a display in a mouse, he began searching for it among hundreds of suppliers. The requirements were simple: strict dimensional restrictions and the possibility of at least a symbolic display of at least eight character spaces. While picking up, I learned almost everything about the displays. They differ in types: character and graphics, technology: TAB, COG, TFT, OLED, LCD, E-Paper and others. Each type or technology has a lot of varieties, sizes, colors, lighting, etc. In general, there was something to dig into.

Breaking half the Internet, I found out that the size I need is made by only one company in the whole wide world. All other options are clearly larger in size. And even the display I found barely fit inside the mouse. As an option, a custom display was considered, which could be made according to my requirements, but this is a very expensive option for me (about a hundred thousand rubles). For the first model, a 128 x 64 pixel graphic display is fine, which is what I chose.

In order to understand how the display really looks and fits with my mouse, I had to order all varieties of this display from manufacturers. What do these varieties mean? The model name consists of alphanumeric unpronounceable combinations like FP12P629AU12. All of them are assembled from various blocks and are clearly deciphered in the specification. For example, the above example can be assembled from blocks FP.12.P.629A.U12, where the type, size, voltage, controller, operating temperature range and other information about the model are encrypted. And the last block is the trickiest. It can have several dozen values, each of which means one or another combination of such characteristics as the presence and color of the backlight, the background color, the color of the characters, the range of degrees from which the information is clearly readable. These are the parameters I was interested in.

As a result, "for testing" I ordered 18 different modifications. The manufacturer agreed, but said that the minimum order is 5 displays for each modification. There was nowhere to go, and I had to agree, knowing that 90% would go to the trash can. And on one of the cloudy days, the express delivery service brought me home a huge box in which you can live a bum of average build. There were 18 smaller boxes in the box, each of which freely accommodated 5 displays, securely fixed for a long trip to cold Russia. There was so much accompanying packaging that the mother-in-law was enough to cover several beds for the winter.

As a result, after thorough tests on a specially assembled stand, two displays were suitable for the series. They differ only in the background: gray and yellow-green. It is them that I will offer to complete the mouse. By default, I plan to set it to yellow-green, but two more options will be available: a display with a gray background and a mouse without a display at all.

But the main intrigue was what information can be shown on the screen? I was offered different ideas: ambient temperature, indication of the arrival of letters, something else not very original.

My train of thought went in a different direction. Let's start with the fact that there are two significant limitations to the display of operational information: the presence of a huge and high-quality source of any information (monitor) in front of the user and the need to turn the mouse over to get information. In addition, the screen is small, the resolution is small, the LED interferes with normal reading. Therefore, I came up with one conclusion: information should be only entertaining, the applied value of which tends to zero, but at the same time the WOW!-effect should be lethal.

What kind of information can have such properties in a device of ordinary complexity? There is not much of it: mileage, time of use, speed of movement, number of clicks and scrolling of the wheel. I decided to refuse the last parameter, since it seemed uninteresting to me. All other parameters are linked to the session ( Lately use of the mouse from the moment the power is supplied to it, i.e. connecting to a computer or turning on the computer itself) and for the entire lifetime of the mouse. For example, the user can at any moment of the mouse find out how many times he pressed the left mouse button or how many meters his mouse ran in meters today or since its purchase. The information is absolutely useless, but it will help the especially curious to understand how much he torments the mouse. If there are others interesting ideas, then they can be implemented with a new firmware.

Also added general information by mouse (model, mouse and firmware number, month of manufacture) and settings screen. It will be possible to choose the language and the system of measures (English or metric). To store all this information, a permanent storage flash memory had to be added to the scheme.

To fit this amount of information, I had to break everything into screens. Each screen displays one type of information, and shows the values of the parameters for the session and for the entire time. There are six screens in total, which are changed with the mouse wheel.

The first option was implemented in a purely textual manner, for which several font options were even developed.

I made a firmware to evaluate how the text looks like using the created font on the mouse screen. Looks awful what can I say.

Now it has become obvious that graphics are needed on the screen, and not a set of symbolic information. Therefore, I hired a designer to work, and together we prepared three options for graphic design, as a result, the second option was recognized as the most successful.

Of course, this design required more resolution, so it had to be adapted.

But that's not the end of the story. After I picked up a screen for the mouse, I ordered a trial batch for breadboards. As a result, the screens came, but for some reason the number of outputs differed from what was indicated in the datasheet. In response to a request, the manufacturer received a response that, they say, everything is fine, this is a small modification, and it will not affect performance in any way. Meanwhile, the missing two conductors were responsible for the brightness of the displayed graphics.

All this was very suspicious. And just like looking into the water. They redid the board for a modified screen, soldered it, and then it turned out that the screen was completely dim. It's like the batteries are dead. And it turned out after a long and painstaking work on the search and selection of screens, the purchase of a trial batch of all modifications and their testing. Time, money, and so on.

But the story had a happy ending. After correspondence with the Chinese, it turned out that the screen can now adjust its contrast directly from the firmware. We treated the firmware, and everything began to show just fine!

Everything is shown as planned: mileage, speed, number of clicks, and so on.

In the future, the firmware also changed several times: there was a setting for changing the language. Two languages on one screen is bad - readability worsens, the Cyrillic abracadabra will only annoy the English-speaking user, and in the future support for other languages \u200b\u200bis may be needed. Difficulties began when I tried to adjust the mouse travel. It seems that there is something complicated: the optical sensor transmits an increment in two coordinates, which must be brought to a system of measures and added modulo to the current value. That's the whole run.

But, as it turned out, not everything is so simple. Two people with mice using the same sensor can get drastically different results! The thing is that the resolution of the sensor (sensitivity) is very dependent on the surface on which the mouse rolls. The best result is obtained when the mouse rolls over white paper. Slightly worse on wood and fabric. On a laminate and a film it is absolutely bad. The declared passport sensitivity is achieved only on ideal, from the point of view of the sensor, surfaces.

It doesn't matter to the end user. He connects the mouse and by trial and error puts it in operating system comfortable cursor speed. The system remembers this factor and uses it to increase or decrease the movement coordinate increment values.

But it's a completely different matter if you decide to read these parameters directly from the mouse. The mouse on one surface will show the result of a run of one meter, on the other - one and a half. The speed will also "lie". And something needs to be done about it.

To solve this problem, it was necessary to introduce the “Discreteness (Sensitivity)” parameter, which allows you to individually select the coefficient for each surface. By default, it is equal to one, which corresponds to the surface of white paper. It can be increased or decreased in the settings. You can not touch it at all, everything will work fine and so. But for true perfectionists, in the leaflet attached to the mouse, a table will be given from which you can select the coefficient for the existing surface and instructions on how you can independently configure the mouse to show the exact mileage.

During the development of the firmware, another one was discovered by-effect sensor operation. If you take the mouse and simply wave it in the air, then the mileage readings will also change. This is due to the fact that the sensor defines the surrounding space as a kind of surface and also tries to get mouse offset values. Therefore, you can observe the following effect: you turn the mouse over, look at the mileage parameters and are surprised that they change upwards right before your eyes. Of course, you can install a tilt sensor in the mouse that disables the sensor for the time it is turned over, but doing this only for the described situation is unreasonable. Perhaps in the next version it will appear, but not now. After all, the mouse is lifted only to look at the indicators, and 99.9% of the time it is on the surface and receives the correct information.

Cable

I decided to make the cable as flexible as possible so that it does not interfere with the movement of the mouse and is “invisible” for kinematics. Well, I personally do not like the "spring" cable.

Sometimes it seems that when creating a product, the cable is the most insignificant part of the product. What is easier - buy in the store right amount cable and unsolder it. A trifling matter. But, alas, not here in Russia. Sometimes it seems that our industry is no longer adapted to do anything more complicated than cast-iron irons. Attempts to find a cable resulted in a three-week search and shaking up the assortment of absolutely all manufacturers of Russian cable products. It turned out that our standards do not describe a cable suitable for modern electronic devices. For example, a four-wire microphone cable with a braided KMM 4x0.12 mm2 has outside diameter 5 mm. This is a lot. Older mice and keyboards have a seemingly thick cable that is only 3.5mm in outer diameter. The closest analogue on sale was a cable from the German company Lapp Kabel, but it also had an outer diameter of 3.5 mm. Now imagine the braid on such a cable. Represented? I will tell you that I saw a similar cable on power cords for irons

So, it turned out: you can’t buy such a cable in Russia. Dot. Well, we are not accustomed to retreat. I go to production and try to order, since they still make cables in Russia. And for this, let's define my requirements. So what do I need:
Cores - copper, braided wires (for flexibility).
Number of cores - 4.
Screen - yes.
Flexibility is maximum.
The outer diameter of the cable is strictly no more than 3 mm.
Color - Pantone 4625 C.
Bottom line: I tried to write off, probably, with a dozen possible manufacturers of cable products, no one is interested in messing with my order. They didn't even ask what mileage I needed. Bottom line: in Russia, such a cable cannot be bought or produced. Sad. But we are not accustomed to retreat.

I go to Alibaba.com. I find the first Chinese manufacturer I come across, write a letter and literally in a few hours I get an answer: we will make any cable for you! I'm shocked. I throw him the specification, money for delivery, and a week later I get a sample. Wow! And I lost almost three months trying to patriotically place an order in Russia. It turned out that the Chinese can quite easily make me a cable with an outer diameter of 2.5 mm.

Bottom line: I ordered 4 different samples from China. At first, I was not satisfied with the scratchiness and dullness of the outer sheath, then I was not satisfied with the flexibility of the cable, then again I was not satisfied with the flexibility, and in the end I settled on the last sample sent, which I was ready to order. They can't be more flexible. The cable has memory. As a result, I accidentally received a cable with memory, although I wanted to be as flexible as a rope

I ordered a kilometer, two weeks later I had the cable. Total time spent: six months.

I braided my kilometer of cable. It turned out two options.

Approximately 10% of the cable was discarded. This is the beginning of the bays, where the braid is unraveled and the machine has not yet entered the operating mode. And some places where, for some reason, loops and knots of braiding threads formed.

If the end of the cable is not sealed with heat shrink, then it will fluff up at the moment, the threads are synthetic! Therefore, the installation of the cable assembly is hampered by the heat shrink preventive nozzle.

The outer diameter of the braided cable turned out to be 3.2 mm, i.e. the braid added 0.7 mm to the cable diameter. It doesn’t seem like much, but the cable on a regular mouse is mostly 3.5 mm in diameter, and in the era of wireless mice it seems thick and heavy. Recently, non-budget mice have begun to be equipped with cables with a diameter of 3 mm, and they no longer interfere with work, they are almost imperceptible. But the keyboard cable can be with an outer diameter of 4 mm. And even more. But for the keyboard it doesn't matter.

Plastic parts

As much as I would like to make the body parts of the mouse completely out of wood, plastic is indispensable here. You need legs, an axle for the wheel, a support for the axle and a glass for the display.

Therefore, I had to order a mold from the Chinese.

After each test casting, the Chinese sent me a dozen samples, which I tested on my mouse.

As a result, I finished the mold three times, until the quality began to satisfy me. The problems were different. For example, after assembly, I got the problem of dust that forms between the display and the protective glass. It looks untidy. Moreover, the mouse will scrape over the surface, and dust will gradually accumulate there. I had to convert the glass into a container with sides, where the display will be inserted, after which the circuit will be sealed.

It turned out here is such a detail.

Refining a mold is not an easy task at all, and changes can only be made in the direction of increasing the part. Therefore, any inaccuracy or mistake can spoil the whole work. For reference: each revision is a month and a half of waiting for new samples. And the change itself could be microscopic, but necessary.

I won't dwell on plastic parts, this technology is now in the lead, and I can’t tell you anything new and interesting here. I will only say about the legs, for which I selected a material with reduced friction for a long time, after which I conducted tests and “races” of mice in order to determine the winner with minimal friction.

Processing and coating

First, there is a thorough work with the removal of pile, sanding and polishing the surface.

stood in front of me difficult task. It was necessary to stabilize the tree so that the geometry of the mouse does not change depending on the humidity, and protect the tree from working in an aggressive environment (sweat and grease from the hand).

From the very beginning, I refused varnish. Lacquer is a surface film that cracks over time, breaks down, and the tree turns out to be bare. Sweat and grease penetrate into the pores, the wood darkens, and an irreversible process of its degradation begins. Therefore, it was decided to use oil as an impregnation and protection, and wax to give a commercial look.

To make it clear: the tree is completely saturated with pores, which contain either air or the oil of the tree itself (if the tree is rubber). Our task is to fill the pores as much as possible with our oil, which then must polymerize and protect the wood.

In order not to stretch the narrative, I will say that I have tried many oils: linseed, teak, tung, vaseline, Danish. Each oil has its own character. For example, teak oil is very poorly waxed, and linseed oil takes a long time to polymerize. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce a catalyst into it - a desiccant.

As a result, I developed two technologies. The first is the technology of vacuum wood impregnation. It works like this: I create a vacuum in an environment with oil and wood. Air begins to come out of the pores. After the vacuum is removed, the pores are filled with oil. As a plus - the tree is well stabilized. As a minus - it is very dark. Looks good, but for an amateur.

The second technology is surface coating with oil. The oil is applied 1-2 or more times with a non-woven cloth.

Apply carnauba wax.

And rub with a muslin circle.

Then, using a mounting hair dryer, I “dissolve” dry wax residues in narrow and difficult places. In the case of "insoluble" debris, I pick up a toothbrush with hard bristles, remove debris and then again locally repeat the procedure for applying wax.

If we evaluate the labor costs of processing, then manual labor per mouse is about four hours.

Assembly

Next comes the installation operation, but before it, you still need to remove traces of processing from the technological holes. Then, using a special 3M tape, I adjust and glue the legs (the case can lead to fractions of a millimeter, and this will be immediately noticeable: it will stagger like a lame stool). Then I lay the cable, mount the board, support, install the wheel and also, if necessary, adjust the buttons (there should be no bounce) and the pressing force. This operation can also take up to four hours.

To solve one of the tasks, I needed to programmatically receive and process images small area paper surface at very close range. Having not received decent quality when using a regular USB camera and already halfway to the store for an electron microscope, I remembered one of the lectures where we were told how various devices, including a computer mouse, are arranged.

Preparation and some theory

I will not go into the details of the principle of operation of a modern optical mouse, it is written in great detail (I recommend reading for general development).

Googling information on this topic and taking apart an old Logitech PS / 2 mouse, I saw a picture familiar from articles from the Internet.

Not good complex scheme"first-generation mice", an optical sensor in the center and a PS / 2 interface chip a little higher. The optical sensor that came across to me is an analogue of the "popular" models ADNS2610/ADNS2620/PAN3101. I think they and their counterparts were mass-produced at the same Chinese factory, having received different markings at the output. Documentation for it was found very easily, even along with various code examples.

The documentation says that this sensor receives an image of a surface of 18x18 pixels (400cpi resolution) up to 1500 times per second, remembers it and, using image comparison algorithms, calculates the offset in X and Y coordinates relative to the previous position.

Implementation

To “communicate with the sensor”, I used the popular Arduino computing platform, and decided to solder directly to the legs of the chip.

We connect 5V and GND to the corresponding Arduino outputs, and the SDIO and SCLK sensor legs to digital pins 8 and 9.

To get the offset in coordinates, you need to read the value of the chip register at 0x02 (X) and 0x03 (Y), and to dump the picture, you first need to write the value 0x2A at 0x08, and then read it 18x18 times from there. This will be the last "remembered" value of the brightness matrix of the image from the optical sensor.

You can see how I implemented this on Arduino here: http://pastebin.com/YpRGbzAS (~100 lines of code in total).

And to receive and display the picture, a program was written in Processing.

Result

After a little "finishing" the program for my project, I was able to get an image directly from the optical sensor and perform all the necessary calculations on it.

You can notice the texture of the surface (paper) and even individual letters on it. It should be noted that such a clear picture quality is obtained due to the fact that the developers of this mouse model added a special glass stand with a small lens directly under the sensor to the design.

If you start to raise the mouse above the surface, even a couple of millimeters, the clarity immediately disappears.

If you suddenly want to repeat this at home, to find a mouse with a similar sensor, I recommend looking for old devices with a PS / 2 interface.

Conclusion

Although the resulting image is not very large, it was enough for my task (barcode scanner). It turned out very economically and quickly (a mouse for ~ 100r + Arduino + a couple of days to write code).

I will leave links to materials that were very useful to me for solving this problem. It really was not difficult and was done with great pleasure. Now I'm looking for information about chips more expensive models modern mice for high-quality images with high resolution. I may even be able to assemble something like a microscope (the image quality from the current sensor is clearly not suitable for this). Thank you for your attention!

What can you do with an old mouse? and got the best answer

Answer from User deleted[guru]
Only it is better to make the lamp LED, since incandescent lamps get very hot, and the plastic of the mouse will probably melt.
P.S. Very good LEDs can be taken from lighters with flashlights. Lighters can withstand only 2-3 refills, and the LED is almost eternal.
Source: We don't throw anything away, we don't sell, and we try not to buy. But we give and select, we repair and do it ourselves!

Answer from Yashpa[guru]
take a three-liter jar, pour sawdust, cut an apple, a carrot and put your mouse there - let it live on

Answer from Dimon XXX[expert]
You can make interesting table lamp: attach a stand at the place where the wire is attached (it can be ready from an unnecessary lamp), instead of a ball, a light bulb. The switch can be made from the filling of the mouse itself at the touch of a button. You can also change the incandescence of the lamp with a scroller and much more.
In this case, everything depends on the imagination and knowledge of electrical engineering.

Answer from Linza[guru]
Look at what brand it is. Go to their website and offer them to buy a rarity from you! Will it be in money!?

Answer from Nikolai Davydov[guru]
hang it on the wall (cut it. glue the glass beads - let your imagination run wild)

Answer from death watch[active]
leave of course .... I have a row of mice, I take out a good old ball mouse and go ....

Answer from SHP!ON[guru]
draw eyes with a marker, cut the wire shorter and you can put it on the shelf
and you will be happy!

Answer from dirty trick[guru]
throw it away and buy a new one where is your logic?

Answer from Owl[guru]
Wow! RARITE is real. Since 1999, so many mice have died of their own death, and here - a long-liver right. It is imperative to find a worthy use for such a veteran.

Answer from above me[master]
Disassemble to find out what's inside, I've already dismantled 3 pieces

Answer from Copperhead[guru]
Don't throw away! She still can survive three new ones!

Answer from neohuman[guru]
You can, for example, paint in a folk or other style - to make an exclusive.
You can then varnish it so that the paint does not rub off (this is how they do it)

Answer from Mark Slavin[active]
give it to the old cat

Answer from User deleted[active]
Throw it out!!

Answer from User deleted[guru]
fit her to the cat

Answer from Elena Starky[guru]
Hang in the fridge 🙂 And show guests "My mouse hanged itself" 🙂
I have been dreaming of doing this for a long time, all hands do not reach 🙂

Answer from 2 answers[guru]

This very simple robot can be made from inexpensive materials that you can buy in a regular store. basis this device is an old computer mouse.
Mousebot is a simple bot that uses two "eyes" with which it sees light and turns towards it. One large antenna is mounted on the front of a computer mouse for collision detection. When hitting a wall, the mouse moves backwards and turns in the other direction.

This project is pretty cheap, if you have an old mouse available, the rest of the parts will cost you less than ten dollars.

Step 1 Parts and Tools:

Materials:

1 ball mouse
2 small DC motors
1 toggle switch
1 DPDT 5v relay (Also fits Aromat DS2YE-S-DC5V)
1 LM386 chip
1 2N3904 or PN2222 NPN transistor
1 LED (any color)
1 1 kΩ resistor
1 10 kΩ resistor
1 100mF capacitor
1 cassette for tape recorders (were common in the 80-90s)
1 CD or floppy disk
1 9V battery equipment
1 9V battery
2 or 3 wide rubber strips
22 or 24 wires.

Tools:

multimeter
crosshead screwdriver
Dremel
Small pliers
wire cutters
sharp knife
soldering iron
Any demolition tool
Super glue or epoxy
Hot glue and a gun for him
Hacksaw.

Step 2. Pull out some details from the mouse:

Mousebot requires a body with some parts from a computer mouse, as well as additional eyes and whiskers.

Open the mouse and find the components you need to take, namely the switch and the infrared emitter.

Remove the PCB switch and desolder it, just like the IR emitters.

1 - IR emitter; 2 - IR emitter; 3 - momentary switch;

1 - Phillips screwdriver will make this task easier

Step 3. Prepare the case:

Next, you need to make sure there is plenty of room inside the case, so with the help of a Dremel, you need to remove all internal plastic structures from the top and bottom of the mouse. If your mouse is small, you may need to remove the connecting screws that hold the two parts of the mouse together.

Now use your Dremel to cut the holes for the switch on the front of the mouse and the motors on the sides.

It is better to use a short cylindrical type Dremel, it will cut well at a right angle when in a vertical position.

1 - if this connecting screw interferes, remove it

Step 4. Make wheels:

The axles on these motors are very small, and if we want Mousebot to move steadily at high speed, we need to attach some wheels to it. Tape cassettes have wheels perfect size in the right and left corners. You may need to rebuild a lot of cassettes to find the right wheels for your axles. Glue them with superglue to the axes.

Cut off the elastic and glue it to the edges by wrapping it around the wheel three times, adding superglue every half turn to keep it together. Cut off the rest of the rubber.

Now glue another elastic band to the one you just completed. Do the same and cut off the excess. Make sure you have enough glue to keep the elastic in place. Repeat this process for the other wheel.

1 - add another layer to soften the touch of the wheels;

1 - elastic band fixed

Step 5. Make a layout and install the relay:

There are quite a few good mousebot layouts out there. It's best to use the default layout. The mouse circuit will be simple, since printed circuit board does not require a lot of space.
Install the relay and solder the wires by crossing them with the connector pins 8 to 11 and 6 to 9.

Then connect pins 1 and 8 with wire along the case and add stranded wire for wires 8 and 9.

Solder the collector of the transistor (right terminal, looking from the flat side) to pin 16 and attach the short end. Then connect the wires that are soldered to pin 9 (left pin, looking from the flat side), leaving some freedom.

Now glue the relay to the case. Here you can use the cut wires as positive and negative voltage poles, which will get rid of engine malfunctions. Use a sharp knife to remove the protection from the contact wire connecting pin 9 and the emitter, and solder it to the power wiring. Then connect pin 8 to the positive voltage pole.

1 - this mouse does not have enough space in the back, so install the engine in the front for freer operation;

pins 1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 16;

1 - emitter; 2 - collector; 3 - base

1 - do not pay attention to this blue wire, you will not need it; 2- it looks like a clumsy connection, but it frees you from additional wires;

Step 6 Install the Toggle Button:

Now add Mousebot tendril. Do this by soldering the positive end of the capacitor and a 10kΩ resistor to the end, which is usually open. You can check which side is the exposed part of the pushbutton switch with the continuity test function of the multimeter. There should be no connection between the middle and normally open contact while the button is pressed. After that, add a stranded wire to ground the capacitor and the center pin of the switch.

Connect the resistor on the switch to the base (center pin) of the transistor and wire from outside capacitor. Then connect the middle pin to the positive voltage pole. To make your connections more secure, you need to use heat shrink tubing to insulate the connections and bend the capacitor to the side to free up some space.

1 - resistor 10 KΩ; 2 - usually open contact; 3 - usually closed contact;

1- this connects to the guide end

Step 7 Build the Mousebot Brain:

The brain for Mousebots is the LM386 chip. Flip it upside down and bend pins 1 and 8 so they are touching and solder.

Now put the 386 in the case and connect pin 4 and pin 6 to the + end and add stranded wire to pins 2, 3 and 5.

We are almost ready to connect the engines. It remains to solder some stranded wires to contacts 4 and 13 of the relay. On this moment your Mousebot should look like the third picture for this step.

1 - pin1; 2-pin 8

Step 8 Build the Top Half of Mousebot:

First, drill small holes in the front of the mouse, two for the eyes and one for the LED. Then drill big hole for the toggle switch on the back of the mouse, and set the switch to make the on/off function in the tail of the robot work.

To create eye stalks for the robot, twist two pieces of wire together and solder an IR emitter on one end. Mount the LED in the middle of the hole and connect the positive end to the 1kΩ resistor.

1 - resistor 1 KΩ; 2 - GND end of the LED;

Step 9. Glue the bottom elements:

Use hot glue or epoxy resin to securely attach the switch and motors to the mouse chassis. Make sure the angle of the motor is approximately straight, then raise the front of the mouse slightly off the ground.

Step 10. Getting close to the finish line:

Connect relay pin 13 to the left motor and relay pin 4 to the right motor. Now connect pin 5 of the IC to the bottom connection and the motors. If you are not sure which side is + and which is -, connect the motor to the battery and watch the direction of rotation. The right motor should spin clockwise when looking at the wheel, and the left motor should spin counterclockwise.

Locate the wire from pin 2 (green) + to the end of the left eye stalk and from pin 3 (blue) + to the end of the right eye stalk. Then connect a 1KΩ resistor to the voltage direction +.

Connect the battery, solder the black wire to the battery cover to the negative voltage pole. Connect the red wire to the battery cover to the switch, and then connect the switch to the + voltage.

Close the mouse cover, and then cut a thin strip of rubber material with a hacksaw. Glue the strip on one side so that you apply pressure when you press the buttons. If you have a streak that “slaps itself on the back”, then you are done.

Now turn the switch and enjoy!

"Everything is temporary. Love, art, planet Earth, you, me. Especially me." (99 Franks)

Nothing in this world lasts forever, and the life of gadgets is sometimes very fleeting. But if you love retro style, are frugal and resourceful by nature, then you can give them a second chance by converting them into something useful and looking retro.

5. Turning an old mouse into a wireless one

Older mice aren't as comfortable and ergonomic as newer models, but they feel as comfortable as an old shirt that's so old that you sneak it around the house on the weekends when no one sees it, simply because it's been with you for a long time and you you are used to it :) If you are still using an old wired mouse, or have kept it as an old fighting friend, then now is the time to convert it into a wireless Bluetooth mouse, simply by replacing the insides of the old mouse with the insides of the new one.

Let's say right away that this is a decision dictated solely by a sense of nostalgia, rather than practical considerations. If an old mouse is too uncomfortable for weekly use, then you can make a camera shutter out of it.

4. Turning an analog TV into an information terminal

Most likely, you have updated your entire fleet of TVs for a long time, and the old men, CRT monitors, are gathering dust in best case, somewhere in the country. You can give an old TV new life, turning it into a YBOX (homemade information screen showing, for example, the weather).

An alternative use is a retro photo frame, which can be placed in the living room. To turn a TV into a photo frame, you need to remove the insides of the TV and replace them with the old sockets and power cord from the lamp, screw in a low power CFL lamp, insert a printed image on the screen, close it and turn on the “TV”.

Now you have a fun retro frame.

If you don't want to waste electricity, make their old monitor a trash can.

3. We make an aquarium out of an old TV or computer

A project from the "incredible but true" series marked "dangerous". Do at your own risk. If you have an old TV, computer or other unnecessary equipment with big amount places inside, you can turn it into an aquarium.

If you want to use Floppy disks for their intended purpose, then you can put USB in them.

1. Making a VoIP phone out of a rotary phone

If you're having a hard time saying goodbye to your old rotary phone, you can turn it into a fun PC headset to use with Google Voice, Skype, or any other VoIP solution.

If you have some unnecessary cordless phones(not quite old), you can make good walkie-talkie radios out of them.

I hope this collection of ideas for transforming old gadgets has inspired you. By following the links you will see visual guides on how to do this or that thing, on English language. All guides are provided with a good visualization of each of the conversion steps.