Air Mouse: Construction and Working

Here is the circuit:

Working

Conversation with a friend on Air Mouse Working Principles:

abc: hey… the air pigeon… how is the mouse like movement achieved?
xyz: Dark magic, with evil-looking sacrificial knives on scantily clad virgins under pale moonlight! LOL! just kiddin 

• It actually uses an (analog) accelerometer that responds to the Horizontal (X) and Vertical (Y) tilts of the device in terms of voltages.
• Then the microcontroller ATMEGA32 sends the tilt data via the serial-port to the PC after converting it to digital using an ADC.
• This is where the Visual Basic Driver takes over and sends mouse move events using user32.dll to Windows .
• For the Clicks, there is a push button on the PCB for user-inputs.

Earlier, the first version of Pigeon was Serial based and used an ATMEGA32. It also required a 5V external supply. I ported it to Arduino today. Now it has a USB interface and requires no external power supply -6th May 2009. See Evolution of AirMouse on Project homepage.