RE: Hacking Optical Mice as position/distance encoders

Tim

There are a couple of mouse position programs that run with Linux. They
read the mouse position and display it on screen. Mouspedometa comes to
mind. I'd think that a program like that could be hacked to give a simple
dro readout on most any OS. Since these are GPL'd you could do most
anything you want with the source so long as your product is also GPL'd

Ray


From: "Tim Goldstein" <timg@...>

>If you open up standard a mouse you will find 2 low line count quadrature
>encoders. I just opened up a MS wheel mouse and it has 36 line encoder
>wheels. Resolution would be pretty rough. If you mounted them directly on
>the motor with a 2:1 belt drive and a 5 tpi screw you would get 1440 counts
>per inch in quadrature which works out to just under .0007" per count.

How are you wanting to interface with one??