Bend/hack an old ball mouse to make it do lots of sounds as you move it.

The name of this gadget "SinteMouse" in spanish, as Im from Uruguay, in America.
"MouseSinth" in english, or as you wish!

If someone simply plug the sensors of the movement encoder of an old mouse to a speaker he/she will get a "Gestual square wave -_-_-_- synthesizer" so to say.

The faster you move the mouse, higher the pitch of the sound.

Here you have a Mp3 record I made of one of my Sintemouses.
http://www.fileden.com/files/2009/5/14/2441655/Mousedosejes.mp3
Listen to it!

Shopping List:

* 1 x Old ball encoder mouse (the ones that have a ball in a hole instead of a red light against the mousepad)

* Thin colored cables from inside the mouse usb cable, or from inside a parallel printer cable.

* 2 x phototransitors (the most common ones, that look like transparent leds) (PHT1 in the circuit drawing)

* 2 x Presets 500 KOhms (PST1,PST2)

* Some mono audio cable

* 1 x Audio Jack of the kind that fits you best :P

* 2 x 330 Ohms resistors

* 1 x 9V Battery or a switching DC converter of between 5 and 12 Volts.
A cheap (not switching) converter will imput 50hz noise into the audio signal. A 9V battery will be just fine.

Tools:

Pliers
Wire cutters
Some cable stripping tool
Soldering iron & tin
Hot glue gun
Multimeter
Screwdrivers

Step 1: Previous considerations and choosing the best mouse to use.

Previous Considerations

If you want to fully undestand how a old mouse works, see how stuff works:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/mouse2.htm
They casually used the same mouse as I.

So, starting from the base you understand basics.
I took out the original phototransistors and glued common Led-shaped ones.
The signal from the original sensors was weak, the new sensors give me more amplitude in the signal.
You could just weld thin cables to the original sensors if you have a good amplification system.

If you do so, you need to distiguish the infrared LED from the phototransistor, one at each side of the encoder disk.
But which is which?
Ways to know:
The LED may have LD printed on the board.
The LED will shine if the mouse plugged to a PC and viewed with a cellphone camera (you cant see infrared light with naked eye, a digital camera can)
The LED may be the transparent one, and the sensor typicaly red, or dark red transparent.

So if you want to hack the 3 pins of the sensor know that pins usually are: sensor1+ / common - / sensor2+
Just weld cables to the center pin and any of the other two.
Plug the mouse to a PC, so that it powers the led and sensor.

You may hear something this way.
If not, keep reading for the complete hacking that no longer involves any computer or the original mouse circuitry.


Choosing of the mouse to bend/hack:

Ive been opening the case of many.
The more complex encodeing systems are inside Logitech old mouses.
Epson did some great encoders too.
The one I like most is the one of the pics of this instructables.
If you compare it to any "normal" mouse its awsomely complex.

Thanks, Logitech ingeneers and designers!
You did great things in the 80s and 90s and keep rocking.

Anyway the hacking is the same for any mouse.

- give DC to the original infrared LED.
- glue a new sensor in place of the old.
- reassamble everything in place.
- hotglue internal cables and weld the external cables.

So when you find a mouse you like, this step is done.