Wireless Tilt Mouse
Exploring XBee, accelerometers, and USB peripherals by building a wireless tilt mouse.
First order of business - you might be wondering where the new product post is for today. Well, we are changing things up. From now on, new product posts will be on Fridays, not Thursdays. We will kick things off with a special-edition product post for tomorrow. We think it'll be worth the wait! Now on to today's project...
Here is a nice project from SparkFun customer Daniel Brondani of Inventions Lab. Daniel built what he calls "a wireless tilt mouse." Basically, this is a computer mouse that you hold in your hand that allows you to move the cursor on screen by tilting the board.
Daniel uses a bunch of SparkFun parts including a ADXL335 Triple Axis Accelerometer, an XBee Explorer, and a USB Mini-B breakout board. While the tilt mouse itself is pretty cool, the project's main goal is to provide an open source way to learn about gathering accelerometer data, configuring XBee modules and dealing with custom USB peripherals. All the hardware schematics and source code are available here (FYI, that is a *.rar file). Nice work, Daniel!
Sparkfun has gone mad with power... changing up new product post days on a whim like this!
I'm totally with you! Friday is awesome enough without product posts. Thanks Sparkfun, Thursday sucks again.
Way to throw a hissy fit. It's really not that big of a deal.
I misread the title of today's news as Wireless Tit Mouse. Oops.
edit: I just got a laugh that there is a redirect from Titmouse to Computer pointing stick. Baa haa haa!
I still don't get why a Baeolophus bird is called a titmouse
Your mission is clear - build a wireless tit mouse and post the plans to SparkFun!
I don't even know what such a device would do. (Though I would have a lot of fun designing it.) Scrolling would be exciting!
Reminds me of an afore mentioned "clap-off bra". This may be a new frontier: Bosom-Related Applications!
@Hamma Slamma: I have never heard of breasts being referred to as "Dodos", but I guess I'm pretty sheltered. ;>
edit: ...and believe it or not, the bird (titmouse) was the first thing that came to mind. I believe that your post was the first to mention anything sexual in nature (barring the pointer stick, but that was from Wiki, not me!), so maybe guys aren't the only one's to thinking of sex.
Birds? I don't think so...
It's a genetic disorder similar to dyslexia only found in males - any one syllable word uttered by a female that has a T and I in it is automatically deciphered by the male brain (or other not so intelligent organ) to mean "I want you to touch them". By the way, there is another (extinct) type of bird also named after these lovely, generally off-limit, wonders of female evolution.
I think I may have that - I just love my TI 89
You are not the only one; I did the same.
The redirect is pretty entertaining, though.
hahahahahahaha
Here ye, Here ye!
I now declare Fridays shall be called "Thursday."
Thursdays shall now be called "The day after Wednesday."
That is all.
You can go about you're normal daily lives.
But you're still going to call it "New Product Thursday", right? It will just be on Friday now? Because, I mean, changing the day is one thing, but changing the name is inconceivable!
(wait for it......)
How about 'TBIAFNPP' - "Thursday, but in actuality Friday New Product Post"
Aaaaah this is going to do my head in, I'm from Australia and Iv'e always had **'TBIAFNPP' as I get to see the new product post at 6am Friday mornings when I get to work.
Now I have to get out of bed early on Saturdays...
And I always thought that you put the post up on a Thursday so that your fans all around the globe could enjoy the post by week end! Its always been on a Friday for us in Aus.
Any chance of loading it up on Thursday night???
Damn you SparkFun! DAMN YOU! You will pay for messing with the natural order of things! Mark my words!
Ok so not really. Looking forward to it :P
sir, well done its awesome job done by you but my one query is that it will do all the function of ordinary mouse like double click to open a folder or application and drawing a some picture in paint and all that function it do like mouse?
A titmouse is actually a lovely little bird!
You guys need to get out more.
maybe no product post at all? that would be a mean april fools.
Yeah exactly, I expect an april fools post forthcoming then back to new product thursdays next week...
They moved new product post to the 1 of April (April’s fool day) I don’t know of course but I small something fishy going on here :)
First of all, I'm fairly upset with the product post day change seeing that my Thursdays are going to be so not cool now. Anyways, I could totally see someone making a fake gun (think COD) with this embedded to control targetting and a trigger along with other features.
Coincidentally it's the end of daylight savings here in NZ this weekend so it all works out really -- but now I have to wait an extra 25 hours to get my new products fix :-( Oh, the humanity!
Darn, now I don't have anything to do during geography class. I guess I'll go back to counting ceiling tiles. Now I have to figure out when on Friday I can make the time to look at TBIAFNPP.
I bet that "egg" thats always on his desk is actually an alien life form and it brainwashed him into switching ;)
Friday is already exciting enough. We need something to look forward to on Thursday.
Comment copier. I Agree!!
But now Thursdays will be boring!!!!!!! :(
Oh well... now fridays will be better!
Edit:+ we get to see it all weekend long!
Showering-with-my-clothes-on-while-weeping-special.
Oh, the last five times I read that as sleeping,not weeping. that would makes more sense.
Yarg! No no product post! Why I oughtta...
Eh, no big deal though. I did always wonder why it was on Thursdays, when Fridays or Mondays would have made more sense. Now it will make Fridays even better!
:D
Yeah, Friday seems more appropriate, seeing as how popular they've become.
Fridays have always been popular, where have you been?
Yeah, "YAY WEEKEND"
Fridays are always good. At least before, I had something to look forward to on Thursdays. You know what would be good: Product post Wednesdays! Bye-bye hump-day blues.
Still, it's hard to complain about the sweet product post.
none at this time.