If you’ve been following my blog, you probably read up on my last attempt at creating a cooler business card. The basic concept was to design a small circuit that when connected to a computer via USB will emulate a mouse and draw out a design. This utilized the ATTiny85 and VUSB platform which makes writing USB peripherals very easy.
The problem with the original design was that I was controlling the mouse in an open loop manner. I was telling the mouse cursor which way to go, but I had no way to read back the cursor’s position. I couldn’t account for minor inaccuracies brought about by things like mouse acceleration settings, and the design ended up getting distorted.
After writing that post, I realized that it’s possible to configure a mouse to be an absolute input device. An absolute input device is something like a graphics tablet where the device selects precisely where the mouse cursor should go.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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