Encoder out of mouse parts ?

Tips & Tricks
1

Has anibody tried to make encoder out of mouse parts. I am gathering mouse parts (optical elements and weels) for long time for rigid optical encoder. Idea is surely not mine and seams very easy to make it if you know how. What do I need to use IR phototransistors as an encoder. It must be some simple circuit. IR diode is probably just conected to the power source. Almost all of my encoders on Korg microControl stopped working properly short after I bought it (new) and I almost didn`t use it at all. After that I realised that mechanical encoders are really bad idea. Optical is virtualy nendestructible! What do you think…?

2

Hey Sasa,

You should try searching the forum

…and/or google :slight_smile:

3

This sort of thing is frequently done by arcade game tinkerers; particularly those who play with MAME.  See http://www.mame.net/  Look up “spinner” and “mame” and you should find some howtos.

4

http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=384.0

Greets, Roger

5

Just a note to ask how your experiment with mouse parts has gone. I had though of using the wheel that triggers the movement when the ball rubs it as a way of measuring the distance an organ drawbar had moved. Time wasn’t on my side though, so I thought I might experiment with it a little later in the year.

Cheers.

M

6

This is exactly what I’m doing (trying to do): recycling old logitech mice (model M-M35)  to use them as encoders, and with it, build a linear fader. (If I find some motors to recycle, I would even like to make it a motorfader…)

I first tried to use the IR phototransistors and LED by themselves, but found out the phototransistors chip works in a mysterious way (seems like it’s a powered chip) and I couldn’t get it to work by itself with the IR LED. So what I finally did was to power the whole board with 5V and get the signal on two pins of the phototransistor. AND IT WORKS !!.

more info on http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=make_encoders_out_of_your_mouse

7

I am a bit lost as to what you did. Are you pointing the IR at a moving object in order to measure its movement?

8

I am using the already existing coded wheel of the mouse…

Check the (newly added) link in my first post…

9

Nice one Dano :slight_smile: Welcome aboard!

10

more info on http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=make_encoders_out_of_your_mouse

great!

thanks for adding this hack… I knew the time would come to use my old ps2 mice :slight_smile:

cheers,

Michael

11

This is super stuff. Will pull a mouse apart and see what I can come up with.

I assume you are using rotary encoder source code at the PIC end?

12

Yes, I’ve used the midibox16e code “as is” and it worked. I then started to customize it a little because I’d like to make a linear fader out of the encoder and so I had to change the speed… But that’s out of topic…