@@Fazer_600 I was being ironic. My dad showed this to me already in the 90s or very early 2000s when he already had some digital camera prototypes from epson.
@@ChaseMC215Oh, him? He gets more freedom, he also dies from time to time. But over time, you could be good friends with him with enough time and paitience.
All of my smartphones detect it. I use them to check to see if remotes work in classrooms at work without needing to remove the batteries and check them.
I remember when I was in high school, the rollers in the mice couldn't be cleaned because some school administrator had decided it would be a good idea to superglue all the ball covers "to keep people from stealing the balls". so people ended up throwing the entire mouse in the trash whenever the rollers would get too dirty, and the school would just buy a new mouse.
What's stupid is that's actually a thing. I remember finding a few mice without the balls inside at school. Not many, but some morons actually stole them. Of course by that time optical mice were becoming popular and cheap...
@@AnonymousGentooman You'd think that, but probably not -- unless you're getting a volume deal on the replacement balls, it was probably faster and cheaper to just toss the mouse. And if you were really determined to clean your mouse, you could just unscrew the case...
This channel is like the museums should be. Less about staring at endless static and boring exhibitions and more about getting more knowledge and interest about how things were made in the past!
I went to the Ben Franklin museum and they explain everything perfectly and the history. I went to others that walk you through and describe the objects while history. Maybe you live in a place where museums suck. No hate btw. Hopefully your day is well.
@@squidslapper7328 most of them suck. It's usually about how well funded they are, but sometimes they still end up being very boring. I find it to be way more interesting to have a good guide person than an "interactive" wall if text on a tablet.
I played quake with an old Logitech Trackman Marble. Sure you can come at me with your optical mouse but my trackball would never fail, especially trick shots with the rail-gun !
Once my mouse broke down and my only spare was a graphic tablet. The mouse of the tablet didn't work great for Quake so I used the pen instead. I had a **** of a good time until there was a hard tap on my shoulder and when I turned around there were 8 angry guys standing behind me each with a spare mouse.
I remember as a kid I was the only one who ever cleaned those mouse rollers. It's still incredible to me how people could use a mouse with all that gunk inside.
So many times at work I'd be helping a coworker and their mouse would hardly move. Can't understand how they could work that way. I'd open it up and remove a ridiculous amount of gunk from the inside.
Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt. I've been in IT since the mid 1990s and I remember opto-mechanical mice and cleaning both the ball and the rollers inside. I also remember my employer bought a Sun Ultrasparc 4000 and that was the first time I ever saw an optical mouse and its special mouse pad. I was part of the team which migrated the company's software, data, and employee login credentials from the previous UNIX system to the new Ultrasparc 4000 system. Solaris for Sparc. Being in IT, not only did I clean the mouse ball and rollers for my own mouse, but for company staff too.
Then TV turned to crap and we had to turn off the TV, because it messes with your mind. TVs became "smart" as the TV programming became more and more dumbed-down and misleading, even outright lying to us.
@@itszain6317 Well thanks. I remember "the good old days" when you could watch cool computer TV shows on TV. Computers were the new cool thing. Now computers have largely stagnated during the last decade. What does a modern computer even do, that a decade-old computer can not do?
I worked in a school before optical mouses were common... We glued the mouse ball covers on so the balls wouldn't get stolen, so cleaning them required removing the cover. Fortunately it was one screw, and it really didn't take any longer than pulling the ball out.
I figured out the solution for the gummed up mouse in the 90's: I had a table where the mouse ball would slide. So I taped a paper onto the desk as a makeshift mousepad. Turned out not only could I also use it as a note/scratchpad, it also kept the mouse clean! The gunk would end up on the paper and after a few months it was dirty and full of notes, so I switched it. I kept on doing that until optical mice took over.
@@countzero1136 Yes, the newer "Laser mouse" overcame that issue. I used a regular old mousepad for a camera-based mouse that didn't like my wife's black granite desktop. Laser mice were already taking over, so seemed old tech that this decorator mouse (bamboo mouse body) used the older generation technology.
If he has an iPhone, it probably won't show IR light. I've tried with friends' iPhones and it never worked. Looking at the very same TV remote or surveillance camera using my Android smartphone's camera always showed the IR light - the fruity phones I've tried never did. Assuming the TV remote had good batteries and was in good working order or the surveillance camera was in night mode. Ditto for elevator door light curtains. Where I live, elevators are required to have light curtains between the doors and typically, light in the IR spectrum is used. If an object breaks the light curtain between the elevator doors, the doors either remain open or, if they are in the process of closing - they stop and re-open. It is a safety requirement. Most elevator companies enable a feature called "nudging" whereby after a preset amount of time, even if the light curtain is broken, the doors will still attempt to close (albeit with reduced force, I think). This is to prevent someone from holding an elevator indefinitely while other people are waiting (on other floors).
Not having any "cellphone" (or any gameboy), I would simply use one of my old digital cameras for that type of task. Their sensors see infrared too, of course.
@@frederickevans4113 What? You mean iPhone cameras don't pick IR light? Why is that? I thought ANY camera could do that. Even my ancient VHS-C camera from the early 90s could pick up IR lights from remotes.
@@OMA2k I think the fruit company put a filter on their cameras, either a physical one in the camera's lens, or a software one in the image processing. It might be a safety/modesty thing following the Sony camcorder IR nudes/semi-nudes from the late 1990s. Going purely from memory, please research it. Sony had introduced a feature called "Night Shot" into their line of camcorders 📹. It included IR illumination to help brighten night time video recording. According to the story, no one at Sony tried it in daylight. In direct sunlight, there was enough IR light (from the ☀) that the camera could see through a single layer of clothing. After months on the market and millions of these camcorders had shipped, Sony was inundated with requests to explain how to use the x-ray vision feature. When Sony tried to issue a recall, most individuals and many stores were less than enthusiastic to return the camcorders. The next version Sony released still had the "Night Shot" feature, but it was disabled in direct sunlight. If I remember the story correctly. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that the Sony camcorder story might have influenced the fruit company to filter their mobile device cameras.
i used to always clean the ball. i used to always throw it in the air and catch it LOL it was cool but one day i realized there was a lot of shit on the rollers and sensors so i cleaned them and i realized what i needed to do
My dad is a technician, he would always pull the gunk out of the inside with a pocket knife so that's how I learned to clean it (not with a pocket knife, of course).
@@plok7533 i used the plastic tool from Hobbytex, a fabric paint system. the tool was a nice blade that was soft enough to not damage the rollers, but sharp enough to get off all the gunk. I've cleaned mice that had so much gunk, it felt like off-roading...
@@kruleworld That sounds neat! I use digital mice these days, but I must admit the rollerball mice have a special charm about them. Even if they could get pretty yucky!
03:34 mouse roller gunk is some of the nastiest stuff ever. Thanks for taking me back to 2003 and cleaning out the mouse for my Dell Dimension desktop I made my first programming and gaming experiments on, lol.
You could save the image after each tiny movement and then compose all the saved images into animation. Viewing the animation will be more logical to understand what the mouse "sees"
You missed the problems with the Mouse Systems pad optical mouse. I know you couldn't try it, but it does not act like an optomechanical mouse even if the way it measures movement is technically similar. The optomechanical mouse moves in the orientation of the mouse. The Mouse Systems pad optical mouse moves in the orientation of the pad, which meant that while it was very accurate, turning your hand any amount, as you do naturally, or having the pad at an incorrect orientation would cause the mouse to move in an unexpected direction. For most people, moving in the orientation of the mouse feels more natural. You could work with it when you had to like on a Sun workstation, but I had little patience. Using a ball mouse and dealing with the cleaning of the rollers was easier.
Interesting. I never really had that issue when I used such a mouse back in the day. I am sure it happened but I think is similar to the lack of issue I have with the up and down direction of a USB. Just something a lot of people encounter that I never really did and the few times I had a slight issue it was so slight and took so little time to correct that I forgot about it. It may be that I also had a more advanced later version of the grid pad optical mouse. Something that may have used grid for the sensor but was more akin to a modern optical mouse. It was such a long time ago for me, so I am not sure.
A lesson re-learned years later with the Apple puck mouse - the mouse with no orientable shape. A courageous endeavor in pushing the boundaries of form over function!
However, you could really annoy the person next to you with a 90s Sun workstation by moving the mouse mat round 90 degrees. So now, up with left and left was up. Small pleasures but you got to find happiness where you can.
What do you mean you didn't get a convincing answer? People have been hacking mouse sensors as really crappy cameras and explaining the same years ago lol. Here, this is from 10 years ago czcams.com/video/bci7Gi05BNc/video.html
@@GoldSrc_ People have search results 'tailored' to them by Google. What you see - even at the same time with the same search - is most likely entirely different than what they see.
Regarding reading mouse data, just go into anonymous mode and google "arduino mouse camera" and you find plenty of results along these lines, which work faster that the one presented here. @@ProGamer1515 I've seen Google not finding some obvious things, but not sure it tailors the results that much to user profiles, usually it's things it just doesn't index properly for anyone or jumbles it with many other unrelated things as to make the results useless. But that's not the case with this in my experience.
Back then, it was always the rollers. Now, many of the balls have degraded to the point where the rubber has gone ever so slightly stiff. Just enough so that it doesn't quite grip the rollers properly, and you get tracking issues. I've found that the Microsoft Serial Mouse 2.0/2.1 are still fairly reliable.
You probably have an Android smartphone. All my friends' fruity smartphones I've tried that with have failed to see the IR light. I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 and it sees IR (as did the GS5 and GS2 I had before). If you have a smartphone capable of seeing IR, that is one way to check the batteries in your TV remote. Pressing buttons: good batteries = blinking light, bad batteries (or faulty remote) = nothing.
Wow, what a packed and super interesting episode. Last year, I ran into those opto-mechanical solution inside a Mac ADB Advanced Gravis MouseStick (I) and had to diagnose it before it started registering movement. I made a lengthy thread about it in the allaboutcircuits forum. Basically, the light wasn't picking enough light because of scratches in the plastic film on plastic film contact inside the wheel between LED and photoresistors. I had to up the voltage feeding the LEDs to make the whole sequence trigger. Most people owning these joystick have developed this problem over time so these 'duds' are unfortunately getting sold on eBay and most people don't realize it's an easy fix by turning a potentiometer for a bit. I went further down the rabbit hole this year by getting inspired by a custom thumbstick joystick getting interpreted by a very small Arduino which sent back the same kind of quadrature data, but digitally, to an old Macintosh serial port, so that it could replace the mouse in a Mac Plus, 512k, 128k or even Lisa. I mimicked the design and tried to improve on it while also making a gamepad case, 3d printed. Our designs and choices are documented in the hardware section of 68kmla forums.
@@theaveragecactus He's probably supporting the 8-Bit Guy on Patreon. I mean, Technology Connections actually releases videos a day early to Patreon supporters.
@@mare65 I was wondering why they did 15x15 instead of 16x16. Maybe a reserved or null value? Or maybe it was easier to have a zero column (and row) where everything was offset relative to it. I don't know anything about engineering but this is fascinating.
3:58 If i don't remember it wrong the direction of the movement was always how the mouse pad was placed and not how you hold the mouse. You could turn the mouse the other direction but the mouse pointer moved up even if the mouse cable was against you.
Pretty neat that you wrote your own program to poll the sensor, though there are already people who have done this. There's even a program called mousecam which lets you more or less "scan" with the mouse, so you can read larger areas by moving around the mouse.
I figured out all by myself that it was the wheels getting dirty. A fingernail did wonders for scraping gunk off. SOoooo satisfying to remove that stuff.
Ya me too and then I taught the other kids and teachers that trick. Because teachers would only have like 2 or 3 extra computer mouse in the class, and when a whole bunch of them had gummed up some of us would get stuck with gummed up ones. Now that I think about it, the teachers sent the computer mouse back to IT for maintenance/repairs because hardly anyone knew about cleaning the rollers...
@@spacefightertzz The optical equivalent, getting a cat, dog, or arm hair stuck in front of the eye, and that's more frustrating to deal with, harder to get out, and lacks that sense of accomplishment. On the plus side, it isn't as sure to happen as gumming balls.
I recently cleaned a few of mine up - definitely a flashback. Did you know, the balls in Microsoft mice, when the rubber coating is removed, fit into paintball guns near perfectly? :D
Your videos turn a topic which is very confusing to understand for most people and makes it simple to understand. Thank you David for making such interesting content, and explaining it really well.
7:58 "Now you'd think all I need to do now is read register B here, which is pixel grab." No, no I did not think that, let alone think at all when the data sheet was displayed..
Benjamin Lum its actually not too difficult to understand, its all laid out on the datasheet, for example take the register Motion at 0x02, so since its using a byte it has 8 bits, below the chart with the registers it lists in detail the bits and the fields and what they mean, like for Motion it says bit 7 (it starts at 0 so 7 is actually the 8th bit) is MOT which it says is motion since last reported which returns two values, 1 or 0, 1 meaning motion has occurred, 0 meaning no motion, with the rest of the bits reserved. What this tells us is that you can read at 0x02 and the 7th bit will tell you whether or not motion has occurred. If you’re interested in reading more for yourself you can find this particular datasheet at media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/Avago%20PDFs/ADNS-5030.pdf
I have seen a prototype of a vacuum cleaner that had a mouse sensor built in to the head to sense the type of surface. That info was used to adjust the suction power. The power went up on a carpet floor and down on a hard surface (tile or wood floor).
Little bit of trivia for the 90s kids: The analog sticks on the Nintendo 64 controllers used optical encoders much in the same fashion as old ball mice meaning they were mostly digital as the encoders can only detect a set distance from the assumed center in so many exact increments. But by being able to detect so many small increments of movement, it essentially "emulated" true analog control as far as the end user was concerned. Probably the only thing that gives it away is the very subtle "ratcheting" feedback you can feel when rotating it, that's the plastic teeth on the encoder discs.
That's how we know it's a documentary by David: He starts with explaining ______ really well and draws some diagrams and other useful graphics before starting to cut some wires, solder stuff and write a basic program just to demonstrate something simple.
I also had a mouse with such a special pad for my XT PC, connected via serial port. At some point that pad was falling apart and I had no money to replace it. So what I did was simple: I printed a similar pattern as was on that pad using my 24 pin needle printer of that time on ordinary paper. Of course, I couldn't print as fine as the original pattern was but it was fine enough, the movement was just a bit slower. Finally I got a very thin, transparent piece of hard plastic as a cover and the replacement was done. While not good as the original, it kept that mouse alive and I could re-print it as often as needed. As you can see, my mouse was already a bit newer and did not work with two different kinds of light, it just required a pattern of tiny squares, circles, or octagons (I tried all three and all of them worked). When I got a new computer, I also went back to a mouse with a ball even though they got dirty, their movement was just smoother until the first real optical mice were available for affordable prices.
I had a Mouse Systems Amiga mouse back in the 90s - absolutely brilliant at the time, so long as you kept the mouse perfectly straight! Angle it a bit and the pointer starts to do the Lambada.
Great video. I was the nerd in the computer lab that could do 'magic' things to mice by cleaning the rollers. Some of the kids used to get so worried when I'd pop the ball cover off and they'd see a flash of the circuit board.
Every time I catch myself feeling too smug about my OG nerd skills & knowledge, I come to your channel and get humbled. Thanks for your great videos and for documenting the beginnings of what we take for granted today!
There was an old project posted on Hackaday where someone managed to used one of those sensors kind of like a scanner. Obviously the resolution from the 18x18 CCD was very low but the result was pretty impressive for what it was. It definitely blew my mind at the time. Unfortunately the link is now dead.
You are a very clever man, being able to hack in to the camera on that mouse! Pretty cool how you've got all this vintage gear as well. A lot of it must be hard to come by, (the stuff that still works anyway).
Kinda reminds me of the Wii's IR sensor. At first glance it seems like it tracks IR light sources - which of course, it does. But how it does that is basically that it's a 128x96 black and white camera with an IR filter, and a built in processing chip that takes the 4 brightest readings, interpolates the pixel intensity values to essentially determine the coordinates as though it was a 1024x768 image, and then send those coordinates + a 4 bit brightness value on to whatever hardware you connect it to... I guess optical mice are kind of doing a similar thing...
@@AkhyarMaulanaPangeranWeb I would say, that the reason is latency: You can make a faster MCU when you seperate it from the sensor. And the faster the MCU can process the sensor data, the faster you can move your mouse cursor and therefore in games where the crosshair of your weapon looks too. Don't forget, when you have a 144 fps screen, your mouse must at least send the position data 144 times a second to the computer, so that you can move your mouse without lag.
I've always wondered if this was possible. That's awesome. Thanks too for explaining how a ball mouse registered direction. I'd always just seen a single opto coupler and wondered how it could tell direction.
"What does it see?"
**minecraft texture pack**
*Gravel*
Sans Cat I was thinking the same
Lol
YES
It's the ash block in rl craft
"let's take a look with a Gameboy camera" - weird flex but okay.
The nerd factor is high with that line
My reaction was like: Sure that's the only camera he got sensitive to IR, alright.
When watch with the GB camera, both looks, maybe is so fast how for read in a screen
Is interesting
@@Fazer_600 I was being ironic. My dad showed this to me already in the 90s or very early 2000s when he already had some digital camera prototypes from epson.
4:28 That's a Humble brag!
_"What does a computer mouse see?"_
Mouse: _I've seen horrible things_
It has seen things no man shall see.
"I've... seen things you people wouldn't believe" (a Mouse, probably...)
I misread the 8 in 148 for a B lol.
@@randomgecko4637 where? timestamp? and what does that mean??
@@yash1152 Back when this comment had 148 likes, I thought the 8 was a B and saw it as 14B likes.
Yo, massive props to the camera man he had to be stuffed into a mouse.
Ikr how the fuck did they do it?
ccc310 Wtf bro thats insane!
Not exactly a feat... In all the movies I've seen the cameraman *and* the camera are invisible.
I love you
Not a single woooosh? I am surprised
We mostly see the mouse pad and our owner's hands. It's kinda boring most of the time.
Considering that you're focused to a distance of only a few millimeters, I'm surprised you'd see the owner's hands and not just some smudge.
@@ovalteen4404 They see *everything*.
What about your distand reletive, the Wireless Mice?
Username checks out
@@ChaseMC215Oh, him? He gets more freedom, he also dies from time to time. But over time, you could be good friends with him with enough time and paitience.
Me: playing Minecraft.
My computer mouse: EVERYTHING IS COBBLESTONE.
apparently im not the only one playing minecraft and watching this
Wait, it's all cobblestone?
Always has been.
That's what i was thinking haha
Death Death Revolution huh yt recommended and minecraft is the most popular game in existence
@@deathdeathrevolution3499 Of course not
“What does a computer mouse see?”
me looking at the thumbnail: Minecraft gravel?
Cobblestone.... but ok.
@@dedinside6085 no way, it totally looks like gravel
@@soup6482 i see it now
Same
@🇨🇦 TheRealLoganYT 🇨🇦 it does look similar to it. And you can't "woosh" someone on their own joke.
See this is why I prefer trackballs: they aren't watching me.
What, do you place your mouse upside down
Fax xD
track🅱️alls 🤨
But they track you in other ways tho. That's why they're called TRACKballs
LIGMA MOUSE BALLS
"let's take a look with a Gameboy camera" not the tool I'd use to check for infrared light but I guess it works
exactly lmaooo
Depending on cellphone camera quality, you can see infrared on them too. Another thing to try would be a cheapo webcam.
Any smart phone camera would do the trick
@@TechnologistAtWork Not iPhone for instance. They have an infrared filter that filters out the infrared light. But my Samsung S10e can see infrared.
All of my smartphones detect it. I use them to check to see if remotes work in classrooms at work without needing to remove the batteries and check them.
I remember when I was in high school, the rollers in the mice couldn't be cleaned because some school administrator had decided it would be a good idea to superglue all the ball covers "to keep people from stealing the balls". so people ended up throwing the entire mouse in the trash whenever the rollers would get too dirty, and the school would just buy a new mouse.
I went to a school like that. the covers were super-glued.
What's stupid is that's actually a thing. I remember finding a few mice without the balls inside at school. Not many, but some morons actually stole them. Of course by that time optical mice were becoming popular and cheap...
@@AnonymousGentooman Well, they always had more of someone else's money.
@@AnonymousGentooman You'd think that, but probably not -- unless you're getting a volume deal on the replacement balls, it was probably faster and cheaper to just toss the mouse. And if you were really determined to clean your mouse, you could just unscrew the case...
“Stealing the balls”... ...BALLS... ...😂
Ah yes, my computer mouse sees a mixture of blocky gravel and blocky cobblestone.
This channel is like the museums should be. Less about staring at endless static and boring exhibitions and more about getting more knowledge and interest about how things were made in the past!
I went to the Ben Franklin museum and they explain everything perfectly and the history. I went to others that walk you through and describe the objects while history. Maybe you live in a place where museums suck. No hate btw. Hopefully your day is well.
@@squidslapper7328 most of them suck. It's usually about how well funded they are, but sometimes they still end up being very boring. I find it to be way more interesting to have a good guide person than an "interactive" wall if text on a tablet.
69 likes nice
Ok boomer
exactly this is how history should be portrayed.
ahh, ball mouse. when dying in quake meant you had a valid excuse to blame it on the mouse even if it wasn't true.
"Lag..."
I played quake with an old Logitech Trackman Marble. Sure you can come at me with your optical mouse but my trackball would never fail, especially trick shots with the rail-gun !
@@vincentlamb3436 I'm playing with a Logitech MX Ergo trackball. Everyone makes fun of me but it's a dream to use.
Once my mouse broke down and my only spare was a graphic tablet. The mouse of the tablet didn't work great for Quake so I used the pen instead. I had a **** of a good time until there was a hard tap on my shoulder and when I turned around there were 8 angry guys standing behind me each with a spare mouse.
@@pingaslord9726 yes the apex of trackball evolution, im not laughing here!
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe" - 1st ever optical mouse
is that a blade runner reference
"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." - Last ever optical mouse
Cubic Apocalypse A man of culture
fechaqui 95 damn I love that movie lol
I am so grateful for optical mice! Never having to clean them, having them work on any surface, and so on are just such huge improvements!
Any surface, except for a glass table. Ball mice were superior for that 😉
Not just glass but glossy surfaces in general is terrible for optical mice
*”what does a mouse see?”*
A mouse cursor: Uhhh I’ve been seeing a anime pad and being flinged into the wall
Copied
@@warrior6633 everything on the internet is copied nerd
@@libee1881 that is not a proper argument
@@warrior6633 never tried to make an argument. I'm just stating a simple fact. You can never say or write anything that isn't copied.
@@libee1881 Lmao he stopped, you win
I remember as a kid I was the only one who ever cleaned those mouse rollers. It's still incredible to me how people could use a mouse with all that gunk inside.
So many times at work I'd be helping a coworker and their mouse would hardly move. Can't understand how they could work that way. I'd open it up and remove a ridiculous amount of gunk from the inside.
Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt. I've been in IT since the mid 1990s and I remember opto-mechanical mice and cleaning both the ball and the rollers inside. I also remember my employer bought a Sun Ultrasparc 4000 and that was the first time I ever saw an optical mouse and its special mouse pad. I was part of the team which migrated the company's software, data, and employee login credentials from the previous UNIX system to the new Ultrasparc 4000 system. Solaris for Sparc. Being in IT, not only did I clean the mouse ball and rollers for my own mouse, but for company staff too.
You Can Remove it?It won't need to be replaced?
@@Dennis_MK yes!no! ;)
It's a good day when the 8 bit guy uploads.
@@QuarTheDev True
@Snackers explain
@Snackers how so?
@Snackers Explain your logic
Yeah
This channel should be on television. It reminds me of all the computer shows I used to watch in the 1980s.
1980s? Dang u must be old
Thanks for 700 😘
abb 710 kra do plzz😭❤
Love you all 💞💕💝
Then TV turned to crap and we had to turn off the TV, because it messes with your mind. TVs became "smart" as the TV programming became more and more dumbed-down and misleading, even outright lying to us.
@@itszain6317
Well thanks. I remember "the good old days" when you could watch cool computer TV shows on TV. Computers were the new cool thing. Now computers have largely stagnated during the last decade. What does a modern computer even do, that a decade-old computer can not do?
Thumbnail: What does a computer mouse see?
My brain: Looks like the old Cobblestone texture from Minecraft
It's basalt texture lolz
Or a new Tuff texture...
coal ore
I saw the same thing xD
Looks exactly like gravel wtf?
I don’t missing cleaning mouse balls. Or anyone’s balls.
People have nostalgia about the weirdest things. "Hey guys don't you miss mullets and having people pretend to play keytars on TV?!?!"
I worked in a school before optical mouses were common... We glued the mouse ball covers on so the balls wouldn't get stolen, so cleaning them required removing the cover.
Fortunately it was one screw, and it really didn't take any longer than pulling the ball out.
😂😂😂
Hmmm
Something wrong is incorrect
I figured out the solution for the gummed up mouse in the 90's: I had a table where the mouse ball would slide. So I taped a paper onto the desk as a makeshift mousepad. Turned out not only could I also use it as a note/scratchpad, it also kept the mouse clean! The gunk would end up on the paper and after a few months it was dirty and full of notes, so I switched it. I kept on doing that until optical mice took over.
I thought I was the only one doing that!! I guess I’m not alone :D
Optical mice don't like highly polished desks though, so paper mousepads still have their uses :)
@@countzero1136 Yes, the newer "Laser mouse" overcame that issue. I used a regular old mousepad for a camera-based mouse that didn't like my wife's black granite desktop. Laser mice were already taking over, so seemed old tech that this decorator mouse (bamboo mouse body) used the older generation technology.
damn boy, i just cleared up the gunk.. manually.. every 2 weeks or so ..
Big brain
Scraping those rollers clean was sooooooo satisfying lol
Dude uses a gameboy camera instead of just a cellphone. He's showing off at this point.
If he has an iPhone, it probably won't show IR light. I've tried with friends' iPhones and it never worked. Looking at the very same TV remote or surveillance camera using my Android smartphone's camera always showed the IR light - the fruity phones I've tried never did. Assuming the TV remote had good batteries and was in good working order or the surveillance camera was in night mode.
Ditto for elevator door light curtains. Where I live, elevators are required to have light curtains between the doors and typically, light in the IR spectrum is used. If an object breaks the light curtain between the elevator doors, the doors either remain open or, if they are in the process of closing - they stop and re-open. It is a safety requirement. Most elevator companies enable a feature called "nudging" whereby after a preset amount of time, even if the light curtain is broken, the doors will still attempt to close (albeit with reduced force, I think). This is to prevent someone from holding an elevator indefinitely while other people are waiting (on other floors).
Not having any "cellphone" (or any gameboy), I would simply use one of my old digital cameras for that type of task. Their sensors see infrared too, of course.
@@frederickevans4113 What? You mean iPhone cameras don't pick IR light? Why is that? I thought ANY camera could do that. Even my ancient VHS-C camera from the early 90s could pick up IR lights from remotes.
@@OMA2k I think the fruit company put a filter on their cameras, either a physical one in the camera's lens, or a software one in the image processing.
It might be a safety/modesty thing following the Sony camcorder IR nudes/semi-nudes from the late 1990s. Going purely from memory, please research it. Sony had introduced a feature called "Night Shot" into their line of camcorders 📹. It included IR illumination to help brighten night time video recording. According to the story, no one at Sony tried it in daylight. In direct sunlight, there was enough IR light (from the ☀) that the camera could see through a single layer of clothing. After months on the market and millions of these camcorders had shipped, Sony was inundated with requests to explain how to use the x-ray vision feature. When Sony tried to issue a recall, most individuals and many stores were less than enthusiastic to return the camcorders. The next version Sony released still had the "Night Shot" feature, but it was disabled in direct sunlight. If I remember the story correctly.
I don't know for sure, but I suspect that the Sony camcorder story might have influenced the fruit company to filter their mobile device cameras.
3:07 I always cleaned the ball... My whole life was a lie
i used to always clean the ball.
i used to always throw it in the air and catch it LOL
it was cool
but one day i realized there was a lot of shit on the rollers and sensors so i cleaned them and i realized what i needed to do
My dad is a technician, he would always pull the gunk out of the inside with a pocket knife so that's how I learned to clean it (not with a pocket knife, of course).
I was 1 years old when those mouse came I think-
@@plok7533 i used the plastic tool from Hobbytex, a fabric paint system. the tool was a nice blade that was soft enough to not damage the rollers, but sharp enough to get off all the gunk. I've cleaned mice that had so much gunk, it felt like off-roading...
@@kruleworld That sounds neat! I use digital mice these days, but I must admit the rollerball mice have a special charm about them. Even if they could get pretty yucky!
The Mouse is really an amazing invention
Agreed.
I swear I’ve seen you on a bunch of videos I have seen.....
You are everywhere in comments
Imagine using an analog stick to move a cursor
I think Trackpads are even more amazing 😄
03:34 mouse roller gunk is some of the nastiest stuff ever. Thanks for taking me back to 2003 and cleaning out the mouse for my Dell Dimension desktop I made my first programming and gaming experiments on, lol.
"What does a mouse see?"
Mouse: I see pad, people.
Title : "what does a computer mouse see ?"
Thumbnail : cobblestone
Desk Cat.
Lol that's what made be click on the video
Looks more like gravel
@@harrasika i agree
Minecraft alpha cobblestone
So...what you're telling me is that MY CLASSMATES IN ZOOM WERE USING THEIR MOUSES FOR THEIR WEBCAMS?
Yea so low quality
N64 mouses*
@@niffuM4205 nah bro it's mice
@@someguystudios23 mouses*
@@niffuM4205 in computing it's actually both.
You could save the image after each tiny movement and then compose all the saved images into animation. Viewing the animation will be more logical to understand what the mouse "sees"
Imagine having a ball inside your gaming mouse
"And yes, it exist."
This post was made by modern pc gang
Imagine needing a mouse pad
This post was made by poor gang
@@gabrieldabriel Imagine using a separate mouse.
This post was made by the Laptop touch-pad gang.
@@argonauts56au1kera6 imagine using a touchpad
THIS POST BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE IBM TRACKPOINT GANG.
@Jacob daemonspudguy Tice Imagine using a pointer or mouse.
This post was made by the Keyboard only gang.
You missed the problems with the Mouse Systems pad optical mouse. I know you couldn't try it, but it does not act like an optomechanical mouse even if the way it measures movement is technically similar. The optomechanical mouse moves in the orientation of the mouse. The Mouse Systems pad optical mouse moves in the orientation of the pad, which meant that while it was very accurate, turning your hand any amount, as you do naturally, or having the pad at an incorrect orientation would cause the mouse to move in an unexpected direction. For most people, moving in the orientation of the mouse feels more natural. You could work with it when you had to like on a Sun workstation, but I had little patience. Using a ball mouse and dealing with the cleaning of the rollers was easier.
Interesting. I never really had that issue when I used such a mouse back in the day. I am sure it happened but I think is similar to the lack of issue I have with the up and down direction of a USB. Just something a lot of people encounter that I never really did and the few times I had a slight issue it was so slight and took so little time to correct that I forgot about it.
It may be that I also had a more advanced later version of the grid pad optical mouse. Something that may have used grid for the sensor but was more akin to a modern optical mouse. It was such a long time ago for me, so I am not sure.
Weird I have a Sun 3/80 workstation I use quite a lot and I never even noticed. Gonna have to try and get it to mess up now lol
A lesson re-learned years later with the Apple puck mouse - the mouse with no orientable shape. A courageous endeavor in pushing the boundaries of form over function!
I wondered if this exact same issue would arise when he explained how it worked. Thanks for confirming that this is indeed what happened!
However, you could really annoy the person next to you with a 90s Sun workstation by moving the mouse mat round 90 degrees. So now, up with left and left was up. Small pleasures but you got to find happiness where you can.
I googled this question just a few days back and didn't get a convincing answer... This is so perfectly timed!
:D
XD
What do you mean you didn't get a convincing answer?
People have been hacking mouse sensors as really crappy cameras and explaining the same years ago lol.
Here, this is from 10 years ago czcams.com/video/bci7Gi05BNc/video.html
@@GoldSrc_ People have search results 'tailored' to them by Google. What you see - even at the same time with the same search - is most likely entirely different than what they see.
Regarding reading mouse data, just go into anonymous mode and google "arduino mouse camera" and you find plenty of results along these lines, which work faster that the one presented here.
@@ProGamer1515 I've seen Google not finding some obvious things, but not sure it tailors the results that much to user profiles, usually it's things it just doesn't index properly for anyone or jumbles it with many other unrelated things as to make the results useless. But that's not the case with this in my experience.
You are the first youtuber that i watched the video without skipping a second.
This is one of the best channels on CZcams! Thank you so much for sharing with us your knowledge! Man, imagine having a class with The 8-Bit Guy!!
Ah, yes, that is the exact thing i should be watching in 2 am
Im watching this At 2 AM ;-;
@@marqon6004 same
What the same :○
@@marqon6004 same
its 1:54am for me right now... yep xd
Ah, the memories of having to periodically clean the crud off the rollers when the mouse stopped working.
And all the tech support calls for the same!
Ah, the old days of cleaning the rollers using a Bic pen cap...
I still do. Using a logitech M-BA47 .
I've heard of people collecting belly button lint and earwax. I wonder if somebody out there collects mouse ball crud. 🤣🤢
Back then, it was always the rollers. Now, many of the balls have degraded to the point where the rubber has gone ever so slightly stiff. Just enough so that it doesn't quite grip the rollers properly, and you get tracking issues. I've found that the Microsoft Serial Mouse 2.0/2.1 are still fairly reliable.
4:30 You don't need a Gameboy camera for that. Phone cameras show infrared light as well. I tried it with the LED of my TV's remote controller.
You probably have an Android smartphone. All my friends' fruity smartphones I've tried that with have failed to see the IR light. I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 and it sees IR (as did the GS5 and GS2 I had before).
If you have a smartphone capable of seeing IR, that is one way to check the batteries in your TV remote. Pressing buttons: good batteries = blinking light, bad batteries (or faulty remote) = nothing.
Title: "what does a mouse see"
The video: *literally explains every part of a mouse*
Learning is fun, isn't it? ^_^
@@aurelia8028 not really, gaming is better
Good
@@itzbarros Yeah but we learn while gaming?
Wow, what a packed and super interesting episode. Last year, I ran into those opto-mechanical solution inside a Mac ADB Advanced Gravis MouseStick (I) and had to diagnose it before it started registering movement. I made a lengthy thread about it in the allaboutcircuits forum. Basically, the light wasn't picking enough light because of scratches in the plastic film on plastic film contact inside the wheel between LED and photoresistors. I had to up the voltage feeding the LEDs to make the whole sequence trigger. Most people owning these joystick have developed this problem over time so these 'duds' are unfortunately getting sold on eBay and most people don't realize it's an easy fix by turning a potentiometer for a bit.
I went further down the rabbit hole this year by getting inspired by a custom thumbstick joystick getting interpreted by a very small Arduino which sent back the same kind of quadrature data, but digitally, to an old Macintosh serial port, so that it could replace the mouse in a Mac Plus, 512k, 128k or even Lisa. I mimicked the design and tried to improve on it while also making a gamepad case, 3d printed. Our designs and choices are documented in the hardware section of 68kmla forums.
how.....
Mu0n
17 hours ago (edited)
@@theaveragecactus He's probably supporting the 8-Bit Guy on Patreon. I mean, Technology Connections actually releases videos a day early to Patreon supporters.
Hmm, mate, since you are so enthusiastic about this?
Why is a hole on bottom of a mouse, - is shaped like a key hole?
Yup, I support the patreon and the videos are up the day before
"there are only 224 pixels" - 225, dammit!
That would be the most cursed number as it's not divisible by 8.
@@mare65 I was wondering why they did 15x15 instead of 16x16. Maybe a reserved or null value? Or maybe it was easier to have a zero column (and row) where everything was offset relative to it. I don't know anything about engineering but this is fascinating.
3:58 If i don't remember it wrong the direction of the movement was always how the mouse pad was placed and not how you hold the mouse. You could turn the mouse the other direction but the mouse pointer moved up even if the mouse cable was against you.
Awesome video, I always enjoy watching guys like you explain common everyday items.
Looks like a 2009 first release minecraft cobblestone texture
My toe is clean
@@rylscrbblr *T O E S*
Yes
Hu the old days of minecraft its nostalgic
Nah it looks like old gravel
me: trying to sleep
8-bit guy: Wanna learn about Mouse Mechanisms!?
It was honestly worth the lost sleep.
bwgti i can agree on this
It’s 6:28 in the morning and I’m going to sleep now...
@@vibaj16 12 am here
Cleaning the wheels on an old mouse was always so satisfying.
Fun fact: the mouse is actually a camera used by FBI to let them see what you are doing.
I know it's meant to be a joke but with tech getting advanced, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out true in the near future
So they can see deep fried minecraft? Or my table?
@@MisterNuke they can probably see your crafting table but idk about the irl table
*FBI:* _wow! nice mousepad._
@@jasfhermelendres4243 lol
Pretty neat that you wrote your own program to poll the sensor, though there are already people who have done this. There's even a program called mousecam which lets you more or less "scan" with the mouse, so you can read larger areas by moving around the mouse.
Switch & Lever yep but I guess that takes away the fun of programming your own code on the Maximite
Link?
@@ramsesvelasco never said anything else.
@@martin_hansen easily findable with Google, oftentimes CZcams comments with links just get flagged as spam.
@@SwitchAndLever CZcams has gotten really close to NK with their censorship of videos and comments. It's really frustrating and sad.
man's answering the questions i didn't even know i was askin
I didn't came to know anything
STILL ENJOYED
This video made me appreciate The Mouse even more! Great job as always! 👍🏼🖱️
I love how calmly you just say you're going to write a program by looking at its datasheet.
I figured out all by myself that it was the wheels getting dirty. A fingernail did wonders for scraping gunk off. SOoooo satisfying to remove that stuff.
Ya me too and then I taught the other kids and teachers that trick. Because teachers would only have like 2 or 3 extra computer mouse in the class, and when a whole bunch of them had gummed up some of us would get stuck with gummed up ones. Now that I think about it, the teachers sent the computer mouse back to IT for maintenance/repairs because hardly anyone knew about cleaning the rollers...
@@spacefightertzz The optical equivalent, getting a cat, dog, or arm hair stuck in front of the eye, and that's more frustrating to deal with, harder to get out, and lacks that sense of accomplishment. On the plus side, it isn't as sure to happen as gumming balls.
How did people think it was the balls? You open it and take the ball out, the rollers have a ton of junk of them and the ball is spotless.
I'm glad this video blew up in many people's recommendations.. have been a follower since forever!
Love the uploads!
To troll, for the picture of what the mouse sees you could've used an image of a piece of cheese.
I remember cleaning the rollers (not the ball) on my mouse in the 90's. Oh the things kids today miss out on :-)
Same here. Same 'ol process every week or so ;-)
I recently cleaned a few of mine up - definitely a flashback. Did you know, the balls in Microsoft mice, when the rubber coating is removed, fit into paintball guns near perfectly? :D
@@the_kombinator Oh my, thats 200 fps of danger there lol
yeah, I used my fingernails for that. In retrospect I should probably have used a better tool. Ah well. It worked.
The satisfaction of clearing the curd of the rollers.
Your videos turn a topic which is very confusing to understand for most people and makes it simple to understand.
Thank you David for making such interesting content, and explaining it really well.
gbc camera was a genius way to find the infra red, kudos to you for thinking of that
I always keep my Gameboy Camera handy for situations such as these.
The joycon(R) can do that to
Sickly Phoenix yeah the ir camera
7:58 "Now you'd think all I need to do now is read register B here, which is pixel grab."
No, no I did not think that, let alone think at all when the data sheet was displayed..
Benjamin Lum its actually not too difficult to understand, its all laid out on the datasheet, for example take the register Motion at 0x02, so since its using a byte it has 8 bits, below the chart with the registers it lists in detail the bits and the fields and what they mean, like for Motion it says bit 7 (it starts at 0 so 7 is actually the 8th bit) is MOT which it says is motion since last reported which returns two values, 1 or 0, 1 meaning motion has occurred, 0 meaning no motion, with the rest of the bits reserved. What this tells us is that you can read at 0x02 and the 7th bit will tell you whether or not motion has occurred.
If you’re interested in reading more for yourself you can find this particular datasheet at media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/Avago%20PDFs/ADNS-5030.pdf
you're GENIUS i liked your INTRO X)
This was a really interesting video!
I didn't understand a lot of it, but it was still really awesome to see how mice work ^w^
Watching him cut out the microcontroller instead of desoldering it hurt me a little.
Desoldering is a pain in the ass!
Watching a good desoldering is a bit therapeutic, for some reason.
"What does it see?"
*deep fried minecraft*
I have seen a prototype of a vacuum cleaner that had a mouse sensor built in to the head to sense the type of surface. That info was used to adjust the suction power. The power went up on a carpet floor and down on a hard surface (tile or wood floor).
So cool. Hope you guys in texas are ok again. Hope to see more videos in the future! ;)
Everybody gangsta till the mouse starts moving on the Z axis. 😔😔😫😫😫👊👊😳😳
The emojis killed it for me
@@boomrr07 😫😫👊👊😳😳
@@boomrr07 they were ironic and basically poking fun at stupid CZcams titiles
@@boomrr07 😔😔😫😫😫👊👊😳😳 ok.
@@boomrr07 banana sprite
So what webcam do you use?
Me: *MOUSE*
nice
What about gameboy camera?
@@CT-rn6ms no that's too high quality
to train a neural network to be able to do facial recognition 🤣
Little bit of trivia for the 90s kids: The analog sticks on the Nintendo 64 controllers used optical encoders much in the same fashion as old ball mice meaning they were mostly digital as the encoders can only detect a set distance from the assumed center in so many exact increments. But by being able to detect so many small increments of movement, it essentially "emulated" true analog control as far as the end user was concerned. Probably the only thing that gives it away is the very subtle "ratcheting" feedback you can feel when rotating it, that's the plastic teeth on the encoder discs.
Fascinating, not just the dive into how mice work but how you managed to read the data direct from the sensor.
2:24 back in the day, we called these RPGs - rotary pulse generators.
Thank you, I will now be using this. ...whenever the opportunity presents itself.
TSA officer: Any sharps or other illegal items in your luggage?
Me: Only a couple RPGs, nothing to worry about...
@@Scwarzkop TSA officer rebooks you on a flight to Guantanamo.
And last time i poked around a cheap MS branded mouse, it was still used to drive the scroll wheel.
Today we call these encoders...
That's how we know it's a documentary by David: He starts with explaining ______ really well and draws some diagrams and other useful graphics before starting to cut some wires, solder stuff and write a basic program just to demonstrate something simple.
Wow, The cameras banks used was mouse cameras, quite interesting
I also had a mouse with such a special pad for my XT PC, connected via serial port. At some point that pad was falling apart and I had no money to replace it. So what I did was simple: I printed a similar pattern as was on that pad using my 24 pin needle printer of that time on ordinary paper. Of course, I couldn't print as fine as the original pattern was but it was fine enough, the movement was just a bit slower. Finally I got a very thin, transparent piece of hard plastic as a cover and the replacement was done. While not good as the original, it kept that mouse alive and I could re-print it as often as needed. As you can see, my mouse was already a bit newer and did not work with two different kinds of light, it just required a pattern of tiny squares, circles, or octagons (I tried all three and all of them worked). When I got a new computer, I also went back to a mouse with a ball even though they got dirty, their movement was just smoother until the first real optical mice were available for affordable prices.
I had a Mouse Systems Amiga mouse back in the 90s - absolutely brilliant at the time, so long as you kept the mouse perfectly straight! Angle it a bit and the pointer starts to do the Lambada.
I admined a Sun box with one of them until 2012.. it was apparently in service until 2014
I had a C64 with GEOS and a mouse.
Great video. I was the nerd in the computer lab that could do 'magic' things to mice by cleaning the rollers. Some of the kids used to get so worried when I'd pop the ball cover off and they'd see a flash of the circuit board.
Awesome channel, awesome content 👍
Sir your work is mind-blowing
0:36 I used to have an Amstrad PC-1640, which had get another mouse connector variant.
I remember the cold metal Sun mouse mats.
Ah, perfect. An 8-bit upload just as I finished preparing dinner. I know what I'll be watching whilst dining!
So, guys... what's for dinner?
R.C. Whitehead RICE
Every time I catch myself feeling too smug about my OG nerd skills & knowledge, I come to your channel and get humbled. Thanks for your great videos and for documenting the beginnings of what we take for granted today!
Next video: “What does my microwave see?”
Microwaves can't see anything.
@@TheAbsoluteProduction Yeah not goona lie they cant see
microwave:
*_mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm_*
Microwave be like blind tho
food
There was an old project posted on Hackaday where someone managed to used one of those sensors kind of like a scanner. Obviously the resolution from the 18x18 CCD was very low but the result was pretty impressive for what it was. It definitely blew my mind at the time. Unfortunately the link is now dead.
You made possible to show what the mouse's camera sees. That was brilliant. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
This is without any doubt the best channel on CZcams, under literally any aspect.
Using the Gameboy Camera to see the infrared light was a stroke of brilliance.
you can use any camera really
@@jokuemt not really, lower quality cameras can detect infrared better, go try it with your TV remote.
I've always wondered how these mice worked. Thank you!
You get reminded of how old you are when you remember thinking nothing when taking out the mouseball to clean it.
This has got to be the best intro i have seen. Wow!
God I hope my mouse can’t see.
Think about the 🐹 hamsters too.
Or smell or feel
Don't worry. It can only "see" stuff less than 1cm away.
As long as it only "sees" the table, I am fine with that.
there's not much that a 15x15 mouse with a fixed lens that's focused on stuff that's about a centimetre away from it can see lol
This is why I watch you, David. I learn so much about how things work and the evolution of things that I use everyday.
I Always Wanted To Do This Project, Never Came Around To Actually Do It, THANKS FOR DOING IT !
You are a very clever man, being able to hack in to the camera on that mouse! Pretty cool how you've got all this vintage gear as well. A lot of it must be hard to come by, (the stuff that still works anyway).
Trivia: modern gaming mice still typically have independent MCU and sensor chips.
@@AnonymousGentooman That's what she said...
Sorry. Had to do it.
yes because they use more bigger camera
@@AkhyarMaulanaPangeranWeb it's more about the processing they do being a lot more elaborate, they're not JUST cameras, they're also DSPs
Kinda reminds me of the Wii's IR sensor.
At first glance it seems like it tracks IR light sources - which of course, it does.
But how it does that is basically that it's a 128x96 black and white camera with an IR filter, and a built in processing chip that takes the 4 brightest readings, interpolates the pixel intensity values to essentially determine the coordinates as though it was a 1024x768 image, and then send those coordinates + a 4 bit brightness value on to whatever hardware you connect it to...
I guess optical mice are kind of doing a similar thing...
@@AkhyarMaulanaPangeranWeb I would say, that the reason is latency: You can make a faster MCU when you seperate it from the sensor. And the faster the MCU can process the sensor data, the faster you can move your mouse cursor and therefore in games where the crosshair of your weapon looks too. Don't forget, when you have a 144 fps screen, your mouse must at least send the position data 144 times a second to the computer, so that you can move your mouse without lag.
4:41 Wow, I think you just fixed a broken pixel in my eye!
But how are you able to get real time movements if data transmission is that slow?
I was really hoping that he might have been able to explain exactly this and the it ended!
I've always wondered if this was possible. That's awesome.
Thanks too for explaining how a ball mouse registered direction. I'd always just seen a single opto coupler and wondered how it could tell direction.
Me seeing this video title in my notification: Uhh.........the mousepad
c'mon... thanks for the spoilers mate