December 11, 2012

DIY Proximity-sensing trackball scroll wheel

 In order to add the equivalent of a mouse's scroll wheel to a trackball, Instructables user "hilukasz" has used an Arduino and a Sharp infra-red distance sensor to read the location of a hand above the trackball. The data received by the Arduino from the IR sensor is then sent back to a PC running processing, which takes care of the scroll action. Here it is in action:


So that's a different and somewhat obtuse method of adding another form of an interface to a computer. Click here for the tutorial, and for more, we're on twitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well.


When creating projects with external circuitry hacking existing devices - consider our range of ProtoShields. From the tiny LeoStick to the Mega range, we offer a complete range for you to work with


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