A Mouse Becomes a Camera | Hacker News Reader

A Mouse Becomes a Camera

hackaday.com

36 pointskristianpaul11 comments

Really amazing. Direct link to the video: https://youtu.be/qAlpt_XYkXI

Only 18 x 18 pixels — wow. It reminded me of the pixelated vision from the point of view of the robots from the original Westworld (1973) movie (and to think they had to jump through all manner of hoops to create that effect). With about 3000 mice you could build a 1 megapixel camera.

Amazed at how well the interpolation filtering worked to improve the image legibility.

Also, this guy reverse engineering the chip, data protocol... This guy hacks.

That video line made me lol, "And here is a dust particle"

For a moment I thought that it is at worst* again one of those taxidermy cameras.

Positively surprised. But the idea is quite old. Here is one building guide

https://www.instructables.com/Mouse-Cam/

I couldn't find the date of the article but the comments are there 16 year old.

And as far I can remember, this is not the original. So can be 1-5 years older perhaps.

* I also thought that perhaps they are now able to read what mice sees using some MRI or neural link technology. In that sense I'm disappointed a little.

This is amazing, but when I read the title I expected a small rodent creature being a camera via questionable biohacking.

Still an amazing and more ethical feat.

I was worried it would involve some very dubious taxidermy… I am pleasantly relieved !

Same here. The title reminded me of that time when someone turned their dead cat (and apparently various other animals since) into a drone.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36954689

This is interesting but nothing new. This idea has been posted on hackaday several times in past. Some even went to stream video

2009: https://hackaday.com/2009/06/05/ds-optical-mouse-camera/

2014: https://hackaday.com/2014/01/14/your-mouse-is-a-terrible-web...

2021: https://hackaday.com/2021/07/30/streaming-video-from-a-mouse...

There was a Cathode Ray Dude video that talked about a mouse that could be used as a scanner [1]. I thought it was an interesting idea.

[1] https://youtu.be/PDjleq0PJX0

so, add small diy pov display under the modified mouse[0] and use voice to text to generate 'mouse movement'[1][2][3] instead of physically moving the mouse.

[0] flexled display: https://hackaday.io/project/164585-flexled

[1] how to create and use audio qr code : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLy7_mP0BSM

[2] : https://thepythoncode.com/article/using-speech-recognition-t...

[3] : https://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2012/05/18/creating-qr-co...

I always thought that robotics devices like Roombas ought to add some mouse sensors on the bottom for odometry. It seems like it would be a lot more reliable than wheel odometry while being super cheap. Mouse sensors are frequently used in college and high school robotics contests for this purpose.

It doesn't work at the needed precision for extended amounts of time at reasonable speeds and distances, unfortunately. Even if you only need it for 30 seconds or so, it's an inacceptable amount of error already. Wheel odometry with good quality encoders is actualy more reliable. So in fact it does break down even at some high-school/college robotics level.

Its better to add a few more pixels to your camera and go for a visual odometry or SLAM system. They're not that much more expensive, either.

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