Using a USB mouse as a free position sensor

Hi,

I'm trying to use a usb mouse as a position sensor in my mobile robot. The robot should be able to move freely in 2D space on a smooth surface appropriate for the optical sensor of the mouse to sense the motion. I tryied using x=get(0,'pointerlocation') to read the position. It works as I expect until the pointer reaches a corner on the PC's screen and when the robot moves beyond that boundary the position will not be reported correctly. So please advise if you know of a solution.

Is there a way I connect two USB mice to my PC and use one of them as the normal device for operation on the OS and the other as the position sensor of my robot?

[Jan]

Which OS are you using? Obtaining the mouse positions is not trivial, because the OS tries to impede keyboard tracking.

Answer 1

[Jan]

You can reset the mouse position to avoid a collision with the border:

Pos = get(groot, 'ScreenSize');
robot = java.awt.Robot;
robot.mouseMove(Pos(3) / 2, Pos(4) / 2);

[Pouya Jamali]

Hi Jan.

Nice solution! The next challenge I face now is how to exploit full precision capacity of the mouse. For example if I have a 1200 dpi mouse and I want it sense 1200 intervals per each inch of movement how should I do that? I need a sensing accuracy of less than 0.05 mm.