(…otherwise known as “My Ugliest Hack Ever”)
I’ve always wanted to use my old-school NES Zapper with my computer and have often thought of the best way to go about this. The original functionality of the Zapper used light detecting technology. When the trigger of the light gun was pressed, the Nintendo console would detect this signal and send a corresponding signal to the TV to blackout the entire screen. Then a white square would be drawn around the target that the gun was to be aiming at (in the case of Duck Hunt, a small white square would be drawn around the duck). If the gun detected the white light coming from the TV, then that meant that you had hit your target and the Nintendo would react accordingly. All this happened with a very fast flash of the screen and was often undetectable if you weren’t looking for it. This method worked fine for a TV but for a CRT computer monitor, or even worse an LCD monitor, it would be nearly impossible to recreate the flashes that the gun is able to detect. So, in order to recreate the functionality of a gun that can control the motion of a computer cursor, a workaround had to be used.

Based on the Powerglove Mouse project previously posted, I decided to use a gyration mouse to translate the motion of the gun into cursor movement on the computer. I found that others had this same idea and were going to great lengths to create their own gyrometer sensor circuit for just such a purpose. However, I thought that since the gyration mouse currently does all the hard work for me, why not just hack it and wire the left click of the mouse straight to the trigger of the gun? This would provide all the functionality that I would need in a NES Mouse Gun and it would be extremely easy albeit terribly ugly. So, for this simple mod, I wired the mouse to the NES Zapper, allowing for both free range motion sensing and trigger happy left-click action. This is a very easy hack, as long as you are comfortable soldering on a $30 gyration mouse, and will give you a fully functional (yet ugly) motion sensing mouse gun fashioned out of the old-school NES Zapper - a must have for any hipster kid from the 80’s.

The first step to accomplish this is to, of course, take everything apart. Above you can see the innerds of the NES Zapper. Most of this is completely useless to us as we are going to bypass the light-sensing circuit and focus totally on the trigger.

Above you can see the leads that connect to the trigger. Whenever the trigger is clicked, these leads connect. This is the mechanism we are going to exploit to give us the left-click functionality of the mouse. I soldered a wire to each of these leads for later connection to the mouse.

The next step is to hijack the left-click button from the gyration mouse. The disassembly picture tutorial for the mouse can be found here. Once the mouse was completely dissected, I soldered the two wires coming from the NES Zapper trigger to the two connections for the left-click button [shown above]. This essentially allows the trigger of the gun to control the left-click of the mouse. After this was done, I put the protective piece of plastic covering the circuitry back on, but didn’t completely re-assemble the mouse. All that was left to do then was attach the mouse to the barrel of the gun to give the desired effect. Yes I used duct tape and I know it looks ugly but I’m an engineer not an artist - insult me if you absolutely have to. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy the video of this baby in action.

Not shown in the video is how I navigate my computer with this. There is nothing quite like opening Firefox with a double-tap to the head icon.

The myth and lore surrounding the Nintendo Power Glove can only be matched by its monumental failure. The most geeky NES peripheral ever was launched with an amount of hype that would make the Y2K bug jealous. However, the Powerglove was doomed from the start. It required too much overhead (with the IR frame you had to wrap around the screen of your tv), lacked proper functionality and had terrible game support. Within a year of its birth, most Powergloves were relegated to boxes in dissapointed childrens’ basements. What was launched in commercials with Tom Cruise look-a-likes and had cameos in the hottest movies is now spending its golden years with R.O.B. in the NES graveyard - but no more. The time has come to bring new life into our old friend and to welcome him back as a productive member of society with the ‘Powerglove Mouse’. With this hack I can strap on the Powerglove and have total control over the mouse cursor on my computer. I can control the cursor’s position with a wave of my hand and activate the mouse clicks by simply bending my fingers - a beautiful integration of old and new. ….

Continue reading ‘PowerGlove Mouse Hack’

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It seems that these days everyone has the handy little gadget that we have all grown to know and love- USB storage devices. However, the appearance of the USB leaves much to be desired: grey, ugly, and plasticky, they aren’t easy on the eyes, to say the least. But not anymore. Imagine a USB drive that you can display proudly on your desk or cubicle; a USB drive that is so undeniably cool, that it actually overshadows your own personal lack of said cool. Imagine the Homer Simpson USB drive. To make this incredibly easy project I used a cheap 128MB USB drive, a green LED and 1K resistor (for effect), a USB extender cable, and the piece de’resistance - a Homer Simpson salt shaker that I got for Christmas last year.

The first thing I did was to take the USB drive apart for two reasons. I needed to get rid of all the extra space the plastic casing took up, and I needed access to the circuit board so that I could apply my green LED. Above, you can see the dissasembly of the drive. It only required a small flat head screw driver to pry the blue pastic apart.

Here, you can see a close up of the circuit board. The four connections on the left side of the board coming from the USB connector is where I made my extra connections. With a multimeter I observed that the top connection is ground and the bottom was +5V coming from the USB line of the computer. So, to add my extra LED, I soldered a 1K resistor in series with the LED between the +5 and ground connections (when doing this I made sure that I connected the LED the right way. All LEDs are polarized and if you connect them the wrong way nothing/bad things may happen).

After the LED and resistor were soldered to the board, I needed some way to protect the circuitry once it was inside the hard ceramic salt shaker. For this, I decided to use hot glue. (I know, sounds weird right? But after I thought about it it made sense) The hot glue is non-conductive so the circuitry will be ok, and it would hold the circuit board in place so that it wouldn’t slide around in Homer’s head. However, this process was sticky, hot and ugly (sorry but i didn’t snap any pictures of this).

While the hot glue was drying, I did a little work on Homer. I needed the hole in the bottom of the shaker to be wider to fit the board in, so I used my dremel tool. I also, made a little indention on the side of the bottom so the wire would be able to fit comfortably under his head when he was on my desk.



Once everything was ready, I stuck the USB inside and hotglued it in place. Its not much to look at from the bottom, but who’s going to look at it from the bottom anyway? What’s the matter with you, nosey? I bet you look in other people’s medicine cabinets when their not looking.



Once the device is plugged in it glows bright red for a few seconds until the computer can recognize it (this was a function of the original USB device but it still looks cool). After it is recognized by the computer, the bright red LED turns off and you can see the soft green light from my added LED.



Above is the final product. Not much different from the original in appearance except for the green light coming out the salt holes. Just imagine the amount of data you can now store in that previously void melon. And look how much happier he is!



After I finished, I plugged him up. Now, with a thing of beauty like this, you can’t just have the default drive name apply, so I renamed the storage drive. Incidently, the drive letter that was already associated with my USB device was J - which is perfect (any true “Simpsons” fan should know why).

There you have it - the very first Homer Simpson USB storage device. However, the process used here is applicable to probably many USB devices. You certainly don’t have to have homer salt shaker to add flare to your portable storage devices. You can cram those things anywhere and infact, I encourage it. If you have any unique or creative USB drives, send me a link - I’d love to post it.

So, I was sitting around with an old N64 rumble pack and I began thinking, “Where could I put a rumble pack where it obviously doesn’t belong?” A few ideas immediately came to mind: a remote control? - meh, I did a remote project last time; a cellphone? - they already have rumble packs; a mouse? - hmmm…..you click on it and it vibrates. Great for FPS games, terribly annoying for anything else….I like it, I like it alot.

The following is a fairly detailed explanation of the making of the rumble mouse. In this explanation I assume that the reader has some understanding of basic circuits and soldering. If you just want to see the final product in video form you can go ahead and skip to the bottom, I don’t mind.

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for any damage that occurs to your mouse, computer, home or limbs. Modding electronics can sometimes be dangerous.

Step 1: Take everything apart. Ah, my favorite part of any project - the destruction of a perfectly good electronic device. I started with the rumble pack which surprisingly only contained a motor with a weight on it. Next, I took apart a cheap roller ball mouse that you can get anywhere. Take a good look at how everything works and is connected before proceeding.

Part B: The Plan. Now, its been awhile since I studied circuits, but here is my rudimentary plan: wire up a circuit that provides current to the motor whenever the left-click button is pushed. This should give the rumbling sensation we want when playing our shooting games. (yes, i’m aware that real rumble packs are activated through software, but I don’t want to spend that long on this project so I wired it to the left-click button on the mouse…any problems? I didn’t think so.) In order to do this, I drew up the basic circuit above. The motor is wired in series with a variable resistor to a 9v battery and the collector of an PNP transistor. Also, to protect the transistor and the rest of the mouse circuitry I placed a diode in parrallel to the motor (this is not shown in the schematic, but I trust you can figure out where to put it). I next connected this circuit to the mouse circuit board. The base of the transistor was connected to the positive side of the left-click button shown below. If you are new to electronics and don’t understand anything I’m talking about, you can research circuits online. Here are a few sites that helped me out:
Electronics Tutorial
Using Transistors as Switches

Above, you can see the underside of the mouse circuit board and the connections that need to be made to implement our functionality. The two solder-poionts on the top right of the board correspond to the left-click button. When the button is pressed a connection is made between those two points. This is where we want to connect our transistor, so that our motor will rumble whenever the button is clicked, got it? The connection on the top right portion of the board is where I connected the transistor to the left-click button. You will need to make sure which node is ground and which node is the positive connection. This can be easily found with a multimeter (a modder’s best friend). The connection on the top left side of the board is the ground connection for the mouse which MUST be connected to my homebrew circuit as well (not having common ground between components is the most sure-fire way to fry your cicuitry, computer, or house).

III: The Test. Above you can see where I wired up the whole circuit with a solderless breadboard for testing. This is an immensly important part of any circuitry project. You can’t just jump to soldering your components before you know that they will work, geez - who do you think you are? Well, I tested it and it worked - Hoorah. Let’s move on.

Four: Enough planning, lets put it all together. One of the first things I had to do for this step was clear a little room in the original mouse. There were some plastic standoffs that I had to clip off inorder for the motor to fit at all. After making the needed adjustments, I put the motor in place with a little piece of that thick mounting tape.

Then I began soldering all the components together onto a piece of breadboard. Apparently, I’m still no good at soldering…

Here is my small circuit board that I placed into the mouse. Again, I used that mounting tape stuff to hold it in place.

Above is the innerds of the mouse all put into place and connected properly. She’s a beaut ain’t she?

Finally, I snapped the casing back on only to find that the motor didn’t have room to spin. So, I took my dremel tool and sawed the bottom portion of the mouse off to allow for full motor spinnage. Yes, I know it looks like a piece of junk, and yes that is a 9v battery hanging off the side of the mouse, but when I’m using it it really feels comfortable. Maybe I’ll make Rumble Mouse 2.0 in the future that has a casing that covers the entire mouse and possibly a more elegant solution to the battery positioning, but until then this will have to do.
Video - In Action

The intensity of the rumble is adjustable with the variable resistor that I wired in the circuit. However, if you want to disable the rumbling altogether you can just unplug the battery and it will work like normal. Now to the real test - gaming. I tested it out with Unreal Tournament 2004 and it was AWESOME! Definately, the most fun I’ve ever had with that game. The mouse was just going crazy with the minigun - it was great.

Overall, I’d say the project was a success. It may be ugly, cheap, and ugly but it will definately rumble your hand off. For any queries, comments or help email me at leadingzero@gmail.com

*UPDATE*: A friend of mine recenlty made his own rumble mouse with some improvements. His is powered through the USB line instead of an external power supply (great idea) and he used a smaller motor so that it would all fit inside his original mouse casing. So, I guess you can just consider this the “proof-of-concept” version His mouse can be found on his site here.
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