Wireless Mouse + Minesweeper

With technology, one can always ease his living. The advancing wireless technology seems poking around every wire in our vicinity. Here is an adventurous project, directly from the desk of Cornell University called Wireless tilt mouse with minesweeper game.

After the advent of remote controllers and wifi, it is time to make your computer mouse wireless too. This project is a handheld mouse device that measures its tilt and wirelessly transmits data to its unit which is connected to the computer via a USB connection. At the receiver’s end, an addition is made in the operation of the mouse. The base unit can also be connected to an analog TV via an RCA cable, and the user can play the minesweeper game on the TV with the wireless mouse.

Two accelerometers are used to trace the tilt movements of the mouse in x and y plane respectively. These voltage signals are then given to an ADC followed by wireless transmitter. At the base unit, the wireless receiver captures these signals and sends them to the microcontroller (Rx MCU). The Rx MCU then relays the information to another microcontroller referred to as USB MCU. The USB MCU interprets the received digital signals and reports the mouse status to computer.

The USB MCU has two modes of operation; either USB mode or TV mode. The TV mode can be used to play minesweeper game on an analog TV.