Poor mans graphics "tablet"

 Once upon a time I was hard at work editing some images for some clients. Then out of the blue my graphics tablet quits working. And while I was waiting for the replacement to arrive, I cooked up a temporary replacement Thus this hack-sawed mod of a regular 2d-wheel mouse was born. Basically, its a mouse with a pen/pencil grip. I plan on later making a true pen-form version from an optical mouse.

Step 1 What you need

 You will need:
-A usb or ps2 2d-wheel mouse
-duct tape
-a pen/pencil
- something to cut the plastic of the mouse with

Comments

[hintzhamlet]

Great Idea! Mine worked great! Please let me know when you do the optical mouse pen. Mine was horrible. It would only go up!! I'd love to see your fixes.

[Mr USB]

Cool idea

[SebiD]

I postproned this project alittle because i am curently working on a reprap 3d printer and i think i will be able to make some nice plastic hndle for the mouse with it;)

[SebiD]

Your instructable inspired me to make one of these using a optical wireless laptop mouse and I am curently working on it. Right now I made a wood model of the thing and I am making some molds with it to cast some plastic to make the handle. As for the electronics I thought of making a separate board for the sensor and led + lens and another separate board for the scroll whell and buttons and another one for the rest of the components all linked with wires. For the power I am thinking of using two small 1.5V batteries. If I will find the time and founds to pull this off I will surely post an instructable on how to make something like this.

[tecneeq]

This should work nicely with a wireless, tiny laptop mouse. Cool idea ;).

[natman3400]

 Only problem is that the tiny wireless ones insides are almost entirely circuitry, and there is no way to reduce the size without soldering. I am actively working on an optical version, but there are problems. I'll update this once i get the optical one down right. If only the opticals didn't use an 8-pin motion detecter thing.