This ultra-compact DIY camera uses an optical mouse sensor and has 3D-printed parts
A DIY maker has built a low-res digital camera using the ADNS-3090 sensor from an old optical mouse, a 3D-printed case, and off-the-shelf parts. Posted on the r/3Dprinting and r/electronics subreddits, the device features a 30x30 pixel grayscale sensor with 64 color options and includes multiple shooting modes: single, double, quad, "smear" panoramic, and a special mouse-drawing mode. Photos are viewable on a built-in display, with capacity for 48 images and support for serial photo transfer to a computer.
The finished camera is very compact but densely packed with components, featuring a 32kB FRAM, Python script support for dumps, several auto-lock exposure settings, and a battery offering a few hours of use, which is quite impressive considering the form factor. The creator specifically added that the panorama as a key feature: it performs a vertical column "scan" for elongated images. Most of the construction is hand-soldered due to tight space constraints inside the two-part 3D-printed shell.
The project documentation is extremely transparent regarding technical limitations and the outcome: the sensor’s output is low-res as expected, but useful for recognizable images, especially with multiple color palettes and temporal effects. The "draw" mode takes advantage of the mouse sensor’s intended usage by letting users sketch directly on the screen. The camera also locks and auto-unlocks for multi-shot sequences, which subsequently results in a more capable device than typical electronics scrap builds. As per the author, the overall experience is pretty comparable to the classic Game Boy Camera. They added that although the latter has higher resolution, this DIY build gets you more color depth and flexible shooting setups for experimental photography.
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