3D printing enthusiast creates camera with a gutted optical mouse’s sensor — lo-fi 30×30 pixel camera took 65 hours to build

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3D printing enthusiast creates camera with a gutted optical mouse's sensor — lo-fi 30x30 pixel camera took 65 hours to build

The work on the software side, also completed in those few 65 hours, delivered multiple shooting modes (single shot, double shot, quad shot, ‘smear’ shot (panorama), and cowboy), plus a bonus draw-on-the-screen mouse mode that uses the touch sensor as intended. Users can also pick from multiple color palettes, not just gray.

Dycus wrote what they call a “rudimentary photo dump to computer via Python script and serial port.” If it works, for archiving the camera’s precious lo-fi cargo, then it is fit for purpose.

Last but not least, Dycus compares their MMC to what is probably the most famous lo-fi image-capture device around, the Nintendo Game Boy Camera. While Nintendo still wins the resolution race, the MMC trumps it for color depth with its 64 vs 4 shades superiority.

This isn’t the first optical mouse-to-camera project we have reported on at Tom’s Hardware. Last year, we showcased the Doctor Volt Mouse Camera with its extremely coarse 18×18 pixel resolution . In contrast to Dycus’s work, the good doctor didn’t bother to redesign the camera housing, so it looked like a mouse on a tripod.

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Mark Tyson Social Links Navigation News Editor Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

bit_user If they'd use a higher-res sensor, I wonder if these could provide a workable solution for ultra high-framerate imaging. Considering how fast the polling rate is, on some gaming mice. Reply

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