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modification for science

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by bastet_5au

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Hello
I'm trying to conect a treadmill via a mouse to work as an input device in the half-life ve, we are uni students, (social science) and don't have any IT skills, but we think the hardware side will not be too challanging but we're not sure about driver modifications for the USB mouse so the system recognises the input. Any help will be very apreciated.

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by gowdeyf

Any help?
If you have an ink jet printer, just drop the mouse inside the cartridege, guide rails area and print a large document. For every 100 pages you print put a pencil mark on the wall. Lift the cartridge cover and observe the mouse's health. When the mouse expires you will have an approximate measure of the mouse's life. To determine mouse half life count the pencil marks and divide by 2. Round up for a cushion.
-Semper Rodentia-
Good luck,
D. Zoolander

by thechas

Let me see if I have this straight:

You want to monitor the track on a treadmill as the input to a mouse port. Correct?

If so, what you need is a good old roller ball mouse that supports a USB connection.

Open the mouse and take a look at the innards.

You will see 2 slotted wheels that are driven by the mouse roller.

The slots in the wheels spin past an optical gate that senses the slots in the wheel to determine direction and speed.

What you need to do, is drive the slotted wheel from the treadmill, while keeping the wheel properly aligned to the gate.

One way to do this would be to connect a pulley to the shaft of either roller on the treadmill.
Then, run a belt from the pulley to the shaft of the mouse wheel.

By changing the size of the pulleys used, you can change the rate of mouse movement versus treadmill speed.

You do want to keep the sensor covered to avoid interference issues from stray light.

Chas

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