Spider mouse

I have a new use for old optical mice. Since they respond to changes in the image they see and detect movement and direction, I am making a little USB bot that crawls about in small places like vents. It has to be a centimeter or more for this version, but I can pull the caps and go LCC at about 2 mm. By adding some very thin wire it can travel in the vents and various other places and just remain still until something changes and then I know that something has moved and I can capture it or do whatever. I also have infrared camera chips that operate at that centimeter scale and I can use them to clean out clogged sewer lines . The magnets from hard drives make a good solid magnetic field and allow movement with very little energy expended. I have modified it to use an external 5V supply so that I can use more energy at the point of operation. I suppose I will see how far the USB can go before it degrades in the cable. I bet I could make a USB extender repeater in the cable using a broadband amplifier. I am thinking that USB is okay for the protocol as it interfaces with existing drivers. It will probably be necessary to make a Linux kernel module to get the most functionality out of a complete design.

The world gets stranger every day. It is possible to put integrated circuit right in the skin like a tattoo and make skin from spiderwebs. I was looking for pictures of an integrated circuit as a spider and ran across Google+ systems and I would say that is better than Fecesbook® since Google already knows everything I am and what I know, which is very little. Here is a link into the other side of the world, time, being, and many other things.