Turn your optical mouse into a crappy scanner

Sometimes hacking is less about improving your life and more about showing off your chops to the 1337 crowd. Such is the case with the optical mouse scanner hack, which uses the sensor inside the mouse to make a "ghetto b&w handscanner." Simply wiring the optical chip to a parallel port and installing the linked sofware allows you to patch together an absolutely terrible looking scan. Still, we can never get too harsh on any device repurposing, no matter how pointless and useless it is.

[Via Hack-A-Day]

[Hillary @ May 21st 2007 2:07PM]

Kill your smurf daily!!

[Hillary @ May 21st 2007 2:14PM]

It's too easy to scan a document with a mouse that has a ball inside.

But do it really slowly with massaging your own!!


Make sure you scream Hillary is on rocks!!

[Hillary @ May 21st 2007 2:14PM]

Vote Hillary!!

Not Big Bill

[Flash @ Jan 8th 2006 4:41AM]

It reminds me of hanheld scanners ;) nostalgia...

[MaC01 @ Jan 8th 2006 4:50AM]

interesting? one of the most pointless hacks ive ever seen

[dude @ Aug 22nd 2008 5:44PM]

Pointless but cool!

[April @ Jan 8th 2006 5:05AM]

Handheld scanners were never this good. I could swear MacGyver made one of those one;)

[TheWakeUpCall @ Jan 8th 2006 6:15AM]

I think many hacks are pointless, then I remind myself, the point of hacking is not always to achieve something, it's just to show you CAN do something, even if it's pointless.

[Abhinay Mukunthan @ Jan 8th 2006 6:43AM]

Cant wait till someone does that for the laser mouse :)

[David Hakki @ Jan 8th 2006 7:36AM]

why waste such a good mouse...

[pcchris @ Jan 8th 2006 8:13AM]

i seen this mug on hackaday.com lastnight i tried my regular mouse it wont work inpout32.dll woulsnt load so i moved it from its folder into the main folder it didnt spit the error anymore but it also wouldnt read is it something im missing like is a modification to my mouse needed

[jose @ Jan 8th 2006 10:01AM]

visual basic app on sight!



vb owns.

[Zverg @ Jan 8th 2006 10:01AM]

pcchris - yes a modification is needed, you have to wire the optical sensor ship to a parallel port. This is a repurposing, not an added purpose.

[Dave @ Jan 8th 2006 1:30PM]

Who cares? I want to see someone turn a scanner into an optical mouse.

[Chir @ Jan 8th 2006 1:57PM]

Attach this to a handheld computer and voila! Spy gadget.

[KianTech @ Jan 8th 2006 2:04PM]

Will it work with my 20x more precise laser mouse?

[DarkFader @ Jan 8th 2006 2:49PM]

Is that a BASIC program?!!?!?!!

Wouldn't think it having such an easy h/w interface.

[The Ickle One @ Jan 8th 2006 4:11PM]

Well, if you're poor...

[me duh @ Jan 8th 2006 4:47PM]

i actually think it's a good idea.

provided of course it could be combined with a text recognition software that really works, it could have plenty of uses.



maybe you guys got so used to the limitations of the flatbed scanner that you've forgotten what other kinds of things you theorised could be done by digitizing things.



-actually what would be much better would be a laser scanner that i could buy.

[The Ickle One @ Jan 8th 2006 4:47PM]

Well, if you're poor...

[Bob C @ Jan 9th 2006 8:23AM]

This would be great for creating "ransom" notes! ;)

[Basil @ Jan 11th 2006 9:47AM]

Potentially good idea... make a mouse that has a dedicated ocr/scanner window to copy/paste text from documents. The hack is just somebody flexing their creative thinking muscles, but not actually doing anything productive.

[nigel @ Jan 28th 2006 2:46PM]

Very good idea but no real life app maybe micro app possibility keep thinking.