Convert an Optical Mouse to Hand Held Scanner
Most people aren’t aware that optical mice have a tiny 18×18 camera built into them. Using your computer’s serial port, you can connect to this micro scanner and essentially build a personal, hand held scanner. After tapping the optical sensor, the author wrote this program in Visual Basic which translates the data sent from the mouse into an image.
Below is an image of a receipt the mouse scanned. It isn’t pretty, but hey, what’d you expect out of a mouse and an 18×18 mini camera For more details on this project, be sure to see the project site.
