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Posted by Joe Strout on March 22, 2007, 11:45 pm
> The idea is to mount the mouse to the base of the press and have a
> piece of aluminum flatbar attached to the ram. The bar would pass in
> front of the optical sensor on the mouse and a dedicated PC would
> display the distance traveled.
It certainly sounds worth a try. My only concern is that it might not
be precise enough (depending on how much precision you need).
> Does anyone know if software to do this exists?
> Failing that, is there any reason why Visual Basic shouldn't be able
> to do this if I were to dig out my old copy and install it?
I'm not sure, but REALbasic can certainly do it. You can't just look at
the mouse position, because that will run into the edge of the screen
and stop updating. But if you treat the mouse as a game input device
(in REALbasic, using GameInputManager and related classes), then you can
get the delta on every update, and keep adding these up as long as you
need.
Sounds like a fun project, so I'd be happy to work with you on writing
that RB software if you like.
Best,
- Joe
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> one with 40" of travel is fairly expensive and I got to wondering if
> you could use an optical computer mouse to measure distance traveled.
> The idea is to mount the mouse to the base of the press and have a
> piece of aluminum flatbar attached to the ram. The bar would pass in
> front of the optical sensor on the mouse and a dedicated PC would
> display the distance traveled.
> Does anyone know if software to do this exists?
> Failing that, is there any reason why Visual Basic shouldn't be able
> to do this if I were to dig out my old copy and install it?
> Remove nospam_ to reply by email
> Jeff H........