optical mouse motion sensor thread

[nickec]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

We did some experiments a few years back with using an optical mouse to track motion on the FRC carpet. Wildstang's programmers determined the hardware hacking necessary to connect directly to the chip inside the mouse, and came up with the code to use an IFI controller to communicate with it. We did the optical design so it could handle the expected travel speeds and view the surface without having to drag on the floor, and made a pneumatically-activated test jig to determine repeatability.

The electrical, optical, and programmatical aspects all worked great. ...

I am hoping to use a laser mouse as a data acquisition sensor. A sub-revolution tachometer. Does this sound feasible?