Optical mouse as an inexpensive kilopixel camera

• Main Author: Hong, Lixiang.
• Other Authors: School of Computer Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Computing methodologies::Image processing and computer vision
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/44737
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Optical mouse has become one of the staple peripheral for computer nowadays after successfully replacing the mechanical mouse. One of the underlying technologies used in the optical mouse is the use of a high speed camera to capture surface images for the calculation of the mouse movement in the X and Y directions. As such, it will be feasible to create a cheap camera out of the optical mouse. The process of creating a camera out of the optical mouse was to first identify and understand how the components of the optical mouse functions. One of the most crucial components is the optical sensor. The data sheet of the optical sensor provided important information such as the description of the pins, the details of the read and write operations and the address of the registers in the optical sensor.