Is is possible to use a USB optical mouse on a PC serial port? I am thinking not, since the LED does not even come on, but maybe I am doing it the wrong way.
Do I need to use one of those old-fashioned ball mice? I want to use the actual serial port, not the PS2 socket.
Thanks for any advice.
Paul Ingram
Paul Ingram Inscribed thus:
Not that I know of, the coms protocol is wrong.
I would suspect so, but unless anyone has some NOS, might be difficult to find !
--
Best Regards:
Baron.
Yes, we have just been tasked to build such a converter. It would require a USB host chip, and it would be driving more than mice, of course.
Not directly. I'm sure one could cobble together a small uC with a USB host stack, unpack the USB data and emulate a serial mouse. That's a lot of work just to avoid stopping by the local used PC shop and picking up a serial mouse for a couple of bucks.
-- Paul Hovnanian paul@hovnanian.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Have gnu, will travel.
Yes, AT90USB1287, PIC24F256 or STM32F105
But you can also use it for keyboard, flash drive and etc.
I'd lean towards the 32-bit offerings there and be sure the USB OTH host hardware within is flexible enough to be usable as a more general-purpose house.
Oooh, you're going to need filesystem drivers too then! -- I'd definitely go for the bigger parts!
We will start with the PIC (96K RAM) and STM (64K RAM) in 0.5mm TQFP64. Probably not the AVR (8K RAM and 0.65mm TQFP).
go
Not necessary, they might store data in fixed size block, with self searching capability. The devices are chained together with RS232. The same input data block is cascaded down the chain, and one of them should return a positive match code.
Ah, I was thinking you were building something like a general purpose module that's, "hook up microcontroller here to serial bus, plug in USB memory stick, hard drive etc. over here, our module makes it easy to read/write files and peruse the directories..." -- This is essentially what the USBwiz does:
---Joel
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Close, but not exactly. They want two RS232 (RJ11 jacks) cascaded (both power and signal) and forwarding data up and down the chain. So, it would be more like a Daisy-Chained USB hub.
I think yes, and it's because of the pathetic current capability ( a couple of milliamps) of the serial power pickoff schemes. USB devices get
100 mA of good +5 power, and typically will use 20 mA for the LEDs. Few, if any, USB solutions will function on the ball mouse/moving- parts-rotor-sense-contacts power budget.
I think the OP wanted to 'down-convert' a USB mouse to a serial port. Sure, the uC USB stack could see these other devices. But what sort of serial protocol would handle multiple clients (between the uC and PC)? Do you have drivers for it? And how slow would it be, handling R/W for a flash drive over a 9600 baud RS-232 port?
-- Paul Hovnanian paul@hovnanian.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Have gnu, will travel.
The USB host/converter can be powered separately from a wall wart.
-- Paul Hovnanian paul@hovnanian.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Have gnu, will travel.
I think mice used more juice then (the rotor days) than they do now.
They were not removable hot then either. PS2 types are still not removable hot. That is from the PC side of it. Always been that way.
SO, you could create an inline gender bender that delivers what the PS2 side want from the USB mouse side as long as it is *the* standard USB mouse spec, and there is one, for sure. The standard PS2 mouse driver should be what you make the dongle speak as/to.
On another note...
I cannot figure out why Logitech is so dumb. They will not make any more thumb ball mice, and that design was the most popular, and they sell for 5x online used! Ball mice are extincting, and they are BETTER!
Moving my thumb only is far better than moving the whole damned mouse around on a mat.
USB ports allow up to 500 mA.
-- You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's Teflon coated.
Yes. The current wireless IR camera mice can run for months on a single AAA cell.
But with 500 mA of power available to a cord type USB mouse, there's no guarantee that the designers were careful. With that big of a power budget, the PS/2 port may not be able to handle all the kewl blue LEDs, heated mouse, etc. So an external supply might be called for,
Right. The adapter would have to be there at boot time and stay there. The adapter can handle hot mouse plugging on the USB bus.
It might also be possible to use multiple pointing devices on the USB side and let the adapter integrate the message streams. Much like my laptop understands both an external mouse plus its touch pad simultaneously. It just has to reject anything non PS/2 mouse.
I've got one. They are nice. Particularly in a shop where there's no useful surface for a standard mouse.
-- Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!
Very strange.
I just googled "Logitech Marble Mouse" and "Logitech Ball Mouse",
There are over 1M hits, available everywhere.
So, "not make any more" ??!!
hamilton
Well, yeah.. all the feature filled devices will need another consideration.
Well, only if the adapter gutz can handshake with each new mouse as they do not all appear the same to the USB host, which you'll have to create and hard code the 'driver(s)' for.
I have a keyboard here that has 25 extra 'other' buttons on it. In Windows 7, without any driver (the kbd is 7 years old) it 'sees'some keys, like the audio control keys and media player keys. The cut and paste keys work and the power key works, but the mouse scroll wheel along the left side here does not get 'seen' without the driver for the kbd. Installing that causes the logitech to get angry.
They are awesome for everything, including gaming. Great replacement for a joystick. If I had to fly a plane where the stick was attached "by wire", I'd rather have a thumb wheel. Maybe with a stick on the side in case someone wanted or needed some fast recovery response.
I should have bought 6 when they were cheap. Just like the old 5.5 digit HP multimeters we were getting on ebay for $150 each when companies were selling out old gear. Now they are harder to find, and grab a lot more than a few years back. I could nearly double what I paid for mine, if not more, since I can verify its function against several that had paid calibrations (which these things rarely actually need).
The version out now is a center ball, ambidextrous version. That is not what I am talking about. They suck. Big time.
Find the right handed jobs. Hell, even their recent model is harder to find. Amazon has items listed for hundreds of dollars.
That center ball thing is what the idiots are pushing. Even Microsoft's right hand thumb ball mouse is jacked up in price, if you can find them. Office Depot has none.
Some are $249 new.
Must be wired. Wireless is no good. Center ball sucks too.
The original "hand rests here" design is the right one.
Three fingers on three buttons, and your thumb on the ball. The whole thing pointed at a slight inward angle, just as your hand would normally fall onto the table.. The world is yours.
Folks with thumbs that do not go past 180 degrees don't like them as much.
Why was there a need for this conversion in the first place?
Why did the RS232 port constraint arise in the first place?
Was it because somebody is trying to get by on the CHEAP with junk?
That would certainly limit the options.
Buying a USB card to stick in the junker computer would probably be the cheapest route, and would open up other fast USB options like flash drives, USB printers, etc.
If there's a decent reason for the RS232 constraint at the outset, please state the reason.
Otherwise it just seems like the result of somebody being too much of a cheap ass to buy a USB card to stick in a junker.
That USBwiz is NOT for that situation!
At 29.95-59.95 that USBwiz is basically intended to build into some type of embedded system right? Or some type of new consumer Personal Computer main board using lots of FPGA and a ""mezzanine"" right?
PCI USB card or 5-PORT USB 2.0 PCI HUB CARD $2.19 to $3.67 SHIPPED to the USA
I found a serial port mouse New in Box $4 shipped to USA.
Lots of mice are designed for the DIN(PS2) port and have an adapter for legacy support through a DB9 RS232 port.
There are RS232 to USB converters which use a "Built-in TTL PC-PL2303 Chip" but the ones I see are for providing a RS232 port on a USB computer, not the other way around. $7 price range as well.
One outfit has a bridge module for this that has both genders of DB9, a USB A port and two little circuit boards sandwiched with a Silicon Laboratories 2102 chip for $15 Still, not quite what you'd want for putting a USB mouse on a DB9 RS232 port.
I'm still betting that adding the $4 USB card to the computer makes more sense.
What do you think, Paul Ingram (OP) ?
There are a lot of good used serial mice layng around, unused. I had about a dozen the last time someone needed one for an old computer.
-- You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's Teflon coated.
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