On Friday 02 September 2005 03:58 am, Andrew Warren scribbled:
> Neil:
>
> Optical mice sense motion optically; an LED shines almost parallel
> (so as to cast the longest possible shadows) onto the surface the
> mouse is on, a small (on the order of 1K pixels) CMOS image sensor
> looks at the illuminated surface, and a wee little signal processor
> compares the image it sees now with the image it saw a moment ago to
> decide in which direction the mouse is moving.

Thanks.  I remember back in the early 90's, we had a Sun workstation with an 
optical mouse.  This one had a small plate/pad with gridlines printed on it.  
It worked, but not very fluently.

Cheers,
-Neil.


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