So, I bought this PMW3360 sensor module, in the form of…a 30$ gamer mouse on Amazon that happens to embed it:
I (very literally) scanned the bottom of the mouse,
then opened the image in Gimp, traced a vector outline, imported it in VCarve, scaled/tweaked it a bit, and designed a holder that:
- fits the arms of my Suckit dust shoe
- has the center of the optical sensor at the position where the center of the endmill would be
- allows to tweak the rotation angle around this center point, to be able to manually align the X/Y axis of the sensor/mouse to the X/Y axis of the Shapeoko
And finally assembled everything:
Unimpressive video:
Now the real fun begins: I already know that the PMW3360 has crazy resolution (24.000 dots per inch), but accuracy and precision on the other end are a total unknown, it may be very bad (which would be undetectable when using the mouse, but would ruin the idea to use it as an X/Y calibration sensor)
I have a python script ready that grabs the mouse coordinates, so I’ll mount a dial indicator, and see what X/Y readings I get from the mouse, and whether or not that is accurate, precise, and linear enough to be useful!