May 17, 2022 23:00:00

A brave man turns his gaming mouse into a scanner

by

Sinchen.Lin

In the past, King Jim sold a mouse-shaped scanner , but in 2022, a new brave individual has replaced the optical sensor in their mouse with a scanner.

Hacking Logitech G402 Mouse to make a Camera! | qcentlabs
https://qcentlabs.com/posts/g402_hack/

Systems engineer Ankit Sharma remembered a YouTuber's past project to turn a mouse into a scanner , and wondered how it would work if he tried it with a new mouse, since the mouse used in the project was old. He decided to try it himself.

The mouse that Sharma chose is a gaming mouse called Logitech's ' G402 '. He received it from his brother and used it for a while, but stopped using it because of frequent problems. He kept it, thinking, 'It's an electronic device, so I'll probably be able to use it for something.'

To turn the mouse into a scanner, Sharma first disassembled the G402. He discovered that the microcontroller used was called the STM32F102 and the sensor was a PMW 3320 rebadged as an AM010. He then asked a colleague to reverse engineer the PCB layout and set up the base.

They overwrite the locked firmware and write code that extracts tiny pixels of what the mouse sensor reads.

You can see how the completed scanner reads it below. Click on the image to play the GIF animation. The word 'Apple' printed on the iPhone package is being read. Although the image quality is rough, it is scanned accurately enough to be clearly recognized as a character.

Sharma has published the code he used in this project on GitHub.