One of the technicians built a camera out of an elderly Logitech gaming mouse and was inspired by the Game Boy camera

If you’re partial to the Game Boy Camera or, dare I say it, the PS Vita’s built-in camera that’s been lying around in your drawer, you can achieve a similar effect with an elderly mouse, some custom parts, and a “quick Python script.”

Recently one technician found its way to Reddit share that they turned the insides of an elderly optical mouse into a diminutive camera that fits in the palm of your hand. It reportedly took 65 hours to create, but the project actually took much longer.

Dycus, the creator of the project, told me that the idea came from there Sprites mods make a post detailing how to operate a mouse’s optical sensor like a very petite camera. They noticed the report “many, many years ago,” but it stuck with them for a while. They kept the circuit board and sensor from an elderly, broken Logitech G400 mouse in case the day came when they could put into practice what they had learned.

“Many years later… I was digging through a box looking for something when I found this board and got the “itch for a new project.” Dycus told me that earlier this year they “renewed their interest in my old Game Boy Camera” and the project took shape.

First, they had to find the datasheet for a specific chip (ADNS-3090) and connect it to a microcontroller to “talk to it”. They could read the chip and the optical sensor sent the information to their computer, but they had to write a Python script to display the pixels correctly. Below you can see the first selfie they took after the idea came to fruition.

From there, “it was basically a matter of figuring out what parts I would need to complete the camera (UI buttons, some memory to store photos, battery, battery charger, etc.) and ordering them.” Dycus then designed the case to fit everything inside, with the camera’s innards “fully packed.”

Interestingly, the camera comes with several setting buttons and allows you to switch shooting modes between single photo, double photo, quadruple photo, blurry photo and cowboy photo. It comes with “several hours of battery life” and can store up to 48 photos.

Dycus’ favorite photo is of their dog. This was taken using a blur photo (or panorama mode) where the column is scaled 2x vertically but only 1x horizontally, meaning you can move the camera around to get a longer shot. The photo is then taken sideways and rotated. I was told that the photo of their dog was “about as good as photos taken with this camera” because the blur mode provides better resolution.

Maybe it’s a good thing I have a drawer full of elderly tech. You never know when creativity might kick in.

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