Ever since the world decided to convert mechanical power from rats to optical rats, we have been blessed with computer pointing devices that do not require regular cleaning and have much better performance than their predecessors. They do this basically using a small digital camera to monitor speed changes. As we have seen before, it is possible to transform this process into a real camera, but so far we have not seen anything like this in a high-performance mouse designed for FPS gaming.
For this project [Ankit] The Logitech G402 is isolating a popular gaming mouse up to 4000 dpi Normally it is processed internally inside the mouse to translate movement at cursor speed, but this mouse conveniently has a familiar STM32 processor with an SPI interface already disconnected to the PCB that can be quickly connected to collect image data. [Ankit] Has created a custom USB vendor-specific endpoint and has written a Linux kernel module for parsing data into a custom GUI program that can display images captured by the mouse sensor on the screen.
If you plan to reuse the mouse, it is probably best not to try this project, as the custom firmware seems to render the mouse useless as the actual mouse. But as a proof-of-concept project, this high-performance mouse works fairly well as a camera, albeit with a much lower resolution than the standard of modern digital cameras. We’ve seen a lot of improvements in older mouse-camera builds, though, thanks to the high-performance sensors in gaming mice.