Building, Scavenging, Fun !

Yup, another project that I started.

Basically, I scavenged some VHS motor from *D’oh, Captain Obvious* an old VHS and I though I could use that little monster to make a Mouse Wheel from it ! What a brilliant idea… except that I had no clue on how I would do this…  but, after a bit of trial and error, I … am back to nothing because I haven’t figured out an efficient way of knowing when the ‘wheel’ have moved and in which direction… but it’s a progress ! Here’s the build log:

Start from an old VHS motor:

Then, get the guts out ( for some reason, I can’t get tired of saying that ! xD ):

One of my try was to hack in the PCB and ‘find’ when the motor spin and which side… but…  failed 😦

at this point, I couldn’t get the MCU to detect whenever the little magnet was coming close to that sensor thinggy… so I had to forgot that idea

Then, I tried the microswitch approach, which might have some potential.

only issue so far is that the screw I’m using to do the trigger on the micro switches is a bit rough on the switches so, it might give a beatie to the switches… Another variation I’ve tried was to use a 3mm LED glued in but it’s a bit too long so the case cannot close properly (and that mean a no-go again).

The next plans are trying to see if I can use an optical reader and put something in the top part that will know when it moves but, i’m not sure yet how it’ll work… and, after that, I still have to hook it up to some USB mouse controller… so that’s not going to be done anytime soon… but I’m working on it 🙂