Students are welcome to discuss with me for potential research projects
Our intention is to investigate the potential of using an optical mouse that is commonly available as a sensing element in physical experiments. Due to the accessibility of optical mice, the project may provide high-schools and colleges with ready-to-use sensors for educational laboratories at no cost (just use the existing optical mice).
The first attempt is to use an optical mouse to track the motion
of a pendulum. I wrote a LabView program to record the position reading from the
mouse. The program also provides other functionalities, including different
modes of data display and real-time filtering to eliminate the un-desired drift
in mouse position. A paper with a detailed description of this work can be
found on Dr. Peters
website. If you are interested in trying out the program, you can download
it by click here and save it to your
local hard-drive. After extracting the file, please read the "instruction"
document first. It provides a detailed explanation on installation and usage of
the program. Please also kindly send me an e-mail to inform me your potential
usage of this program. I would love to know where this little program has found
home.