I Bought a Soviet Era Gaming Mouse

[JordB]

 

Can we make an antique mouse from the Soviet Union work with a modern computer? Can we make it work well enough to play games?

 

Buy a Raspberry Pi Pico Microcontroller: https://geni.us/i0FCKl0

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

 

Edit: For anyone asking about the code - check out: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1530630-i-bought-a-soviet-era-gaming-mouse/?do=findComment&comment=16135723

[nineclicks]

Could the Pico code be posted for posterity? Maybe someday it could be useful to someone.

[Kronoton]

1 question, somewhat off topic, is that guy's really named Ariel Wolle or did you try to pull some wool over our heads.....

[Potatoes2241]

Somewhere in a parallel universe, comrade Leonid Sebastianenko of Leonid Civil Entertainment Cooperative (imeni Lenina) was sent off to Gulag after an official complaint of Sergey Burkenov of Computer Players Association, in which it was claimed that Leonid systematically misinterpreted the planned performance estimates of products made by the state Research Institute "Сила Же", harming the image of the Soviet electronic products in the eyes of honest workers.

[EllieCat]

I think my office mouse will work better.

[darknessblade]

Comrade Linus playing games as the soviets intended

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

Get the labs guy proof read your scripts:

" we replaced the arduino with a pi pico"

 

Rephrasing to PC to show how ridicules this sentence is: We replaced Windows with a RTX4090.

 

Spoiler

Arduino is mostly referred to in the sense of a "framework"/ecosystem (Arduino IDE, library's, etc.). It's software.

A Pi pico is hardware.

 

[Sunoo]

3 hours ago, FlyingPotato_is_taken said:

Get the labs guy proof read your scripts:

" we replaced the arduino with a pi pico"

 

Rephrasing to PC to show how ridicules this sentence is: We replaced Windows with a RTX4090.

 

  Hide contents

Arduino is mostly referred to in the sense of a "framework"/ecosystem (Arduino IDE, library's, etc.). It's software.

A Pi pico is hardware.

 

Christ, everyone wants to nitpick everything to death these days. First off, Arduino makes a bunch of hardware. Secondly, what you’re doing is closer to complaining that a Dell isn’t a PC, because the PC has to be made by IBM.

[Freakwise]

5 hours ago, FlyingPotato_is_taken said:

Get the labs guy proof read your scripts:

" we replaced the arduino with a pi pico"

 

Rephrasing to PC to show how ridicules this sentence is: We replaced Windows with a RTX4090.

 

  Hide contents

Arduino is mostly referred to in the sense of a "framework"/ecosystem (Arduino IDE, library's, etc.). It's software.

A Pi pico is hardware.

 

I like that hou heard of arduino ecosystems/Framework and all but seems to not knowing that, they too make a microcontroller board on their own 

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

@Sunoo They stated they want todo better, they want to fact check and this should be a showcase of what to expect.

Quotes like this shows that the person writing and hosting lacks understanding within this topic and you can't fool them for it as there job description doesn't included embedded systems but this opens the door for errors as there is no common sense to catch them. It's black magic.

 

If you want to go the hardware route it doesn't make any sense either: In this case the person would have scripted something like Arduino nano.

 

Without any context Arduino refers to what the Arduino IDE does. Further it implies to the average user who has no clue that Arduino can't do USB HID. When they get into it they have the perception that Arduino isn't good for HID. The number of people that think a Raspberry Pi pico is a cheaper Pi zero is astonishing. They hear Raspberry Pi and be like yeah I know that.

To make it more confusing they might as well used Arduino on the RP2040 to recycle existing code.

 

 

From a technical perspective  LTT-labs solved  a fairly simple task as they had the schematics. Without them it would have taken longer: tear it down, trace the PCB and draw a schematic. Alternatively treat it like a blackbox and ignore the technical aspects. Issue is you require a starting point/working configuration to capture data and not accidently blowing it up (not that much of a concern with a mouse).

Without any Russian language skills you should be able to read it; knowing it's a mouse.

The other section of the schematic looks like it also easy to read. Soviet ICs can be a pain as their naming doesn't match western counterparts and they basically got extinguish in 1989. At that time you still had printed data books.

 

@Freakwise Belive me I know they make hardware. I have a complete drawer full with miscellaneous devboards laying around. Some of them are first party Ardunino boards. Some are third party and most aren't  related to it. I presume some could be used with Arduino due to their popularity they gained but most probably don't have a core published. The odd ball under them is probably the Parallax propeller.

[marzvrover]

long time watcher, but first time on the forum.

 

this is a cool project. It’d be great if you open sourced these types of projects!

[YEETMAN]

Quote from the video on timestamp: 13:34
"tweak the pico to move farther, right on each pole and it could be a lot faster but that would make the jitteriness to go up, we could make the jitteriness to go away by making it not move as far so its not skipping 10 pixels each time, but then it would be even slower"

But here's a thought: Why not extend the pico's movement to have less precision from the mouse with a further location than the original (which linus says adds jitteriness due to skipping 10 frames), and then interpolate between the points before passing it to the pc? Given that there are ample cycles available, this could potentially maintain the increased and interpolated DPI without adding jitteriness. Am I missing something here?

[Eviljuche]

Lol, as a Russian, I read the schematics from just the glance, and I wonder why nobody just googled how a common compoenets on the Soviet/Russian schematics look like (flip-flops are VERY distinguishable)

 

Also, we are making computer mice again (Beshtau M100RU is made in the city of Yessentuky), but those have boring Chinese USB HID controllers...

Spoiler

 

[manikyath]

17 hours ago, FlyingPotato_is_taken said:

Get the labs guy proof read your scripts:

" we replaced the arduino with a pi pico"

 

Rephrasing to PC to show how ridicules this sentence is: We replaced Windows with a RTX4090.

 

  Hide contents

Arduino is mostly referred to in the sense of a "framework"/ecosystem (Arduino IDE, library's, etc.). It's software.

A Pi pico is hardware.

 

what the actual fudge are you on about...

 

"an arduino" is how the majority of arduino-ecosystem-users describe using one of the many options they offer. yes.. arduino is an ecosystem, but there is no one on this earth except you that would be confused by "replacing the arduino" while holding a piece of hardware to mean the software ecosystem.

 

it's sort of like saying "we replaced the ford with a polestar 2" yes.. ford is much more than a singular vehicle, but the sentence still makes perfect sense.

 

so..  in the sencence you have difficulty understanding, by context it should be perfectly obvious they are talking about a piece of hardware made by arduino or made for the arduino ecosystem, not the ecosystem itself.

 

and since you like nitpicking, the pi pico is a development board for the RP2040 microcontroller, and is essentially a software platform based on top of this chip, because the chip itself is honestly dum as fuq and most of the features are at least software defined to some degree.. including the way it's intended to run code. (put python files on it's storage)

 

---

 

having that said.. i came here expecting people to nitpick on them calling it a "gaming" mouse.. but i found people nitpicking everything but that.

[Spotty]

Thread cleaned.

Keep discussion related to the video, not your opinions on the Soviet Union, Communism, or whatever else.

• No political content, regardless of your views.

[Radon17]

Another project about connecting Marsianka to the modern computer (here it's a Mac)
 

 

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

@manikyath I don't know anybody who refers to a board as just Arduino without the product name.

Practically that would be utterly useless as it could be anything from a low end MCU like Attiny12 all the way up to SAM-D or STM32H7 class chips. 

 

The major issue is the perception that people misunderstand that Arduino can't do HMI. That's not just some hypnotical issue. It's what already happens out there all the time. Just browse through beginner forums/Facebook groups.

 

On 9/10/2023 at 6:52 PM, manikyath said:

and since you like nitpicking, the pi pico is a development board for the RP2040 microcontroller,

Both would both lead to the same technical documentation and generally people know both.

 

On 9/10/2023 at 6:52 PM, manikyath said:

and is essentially a software platform based on top of this chip, because the chip itself is honestly dum as fuq and most of the features are at least software defined to some degree.. including the way it's intended to run code. (put python files on it's storage)

What? Do you actually use them?

 

Every MCU is dum as fug. 

Every MCU is used with some HAL and other software sitting between the code and binary's. Exception to this are low end ICs and edge cases. There are dozens of options out there: Zephyr, Chibi, RT-thread and more.

At the core the RP2040 is a M0+ with some modifications/additions.

Dropping "python" files into the folder is one way to load code. There are more options.

[gudvinr]

11 hours ago, FlyingPotato_is_taken said:

@manikyath I don't know anybody who refers to a board as just Arduino without the product name.

Practically that would be utterly useless as it could be anything from a low end MCU like Attiny12 all the way up to SAM-D or STM32H7 class chips.

Bro, just chill. It doesn't matter.

If one already knows all the details, your explanation brings no value. If it's someone who doesn't know anything about embedded stuff, they couldn't care less either. It's entertaining piece of content and not some "build your own mouse guide".

 

Although they probably should've released code for pico just for the sake of preservation for that historical item.

[maplepants]

On 9/10/2023 at 7:54 AM, marzvrover said:

long time watcher, but first time on the forum.

 

this is a cool project. It’d be great if you open sourced these types of projects!

This is a common sentiment, among people who've never taken an internal project and open sourced it.

 

I have, at work, and it's a huge pain in the butt. GitHub users give you a lot of flak about documentation, which you might not have because internally the code was written and used by the same person. Then you'll get PRs for features that you might not care about, plus you might not care about the project at all anymore.

 

So right now that code is probably in some internal git repo, and will sit untouched. Requiring 0 effort from LTT. If they throw it on GitHub the amount of continued effort jumps way up from 0, but the continued benefit remains 0.

 

I love open source software, have released open source software, and have contributed to open source software. But there's a big difference between me releasing something as "some dumbass", and LTT releasing something as a company.

[YEETMAN]

2 hours ago, maplepants said:

I love open source software, have released open source software, and have contributed to open source software. But there's a big difference between me releasing something as "some dumbass", and LTT releasing something as a company.

This is definitely true but having something out there is better than nothing. I am a person who works on open source software predominantly on personal time and at work and for anything that may have no support but is there for reasons of archival/documentation creating a warning on the readme which is more than enough most of the times but another option being fully disabling issues and not letting pull requests come in if not part of an organization will do the trick.

The reason open sourcing was referenced in the comments is I believe due to the labs related work going open source overall.

[maplepants]

11 minutes ago, YEETMAN said:

This is definitely true but having something out there is better than nothing. I am a person who works on open source software predominantly on personal time and at work and for anything that may have no support but is there for reasons of archival/documentation creating a warning on the readme which is more than enough most of the times but another option being fully disabling issues and not letting pull requests come in if not part of an organization will do the trick.

The reason open sourcing was referenced in the comments is I believe due to the labs related work going open source overall.

My understanding is that the Labs will be open sourcing their testing scripts/software but *not* that they'd just open source every bit of code they write.

 

If they did, the majority of the volume of open sourced LMG software would be crappy, poorly documented, and poorly maintained scripts. They'd be taking a major reputational hit for basically no benefit. If you think a README.md is all it takes for a company to open source some project without it being embarrassingly bad you just don't have experience with this problem. 

 

The company I work for currently is small, and wouldn't make a good example here. But one of the larger IT consulting firms in Canada is CGI. I've worked with their consultants before, and can assure you they've got lots of people writing lots of software. Doing everything from employee apps, to docker swarm and k8s orchestration templates. As best I can tell, this CGI France org is the extent of their open source presence. It contains 16 projects. These are not the only 16 projects that CGI France employees have ever written. They're just the only ones where open sourcing the project was worth the maintenance to not be an embarrassment to CGI France or CGI globally.

 

If the Labs team truly did open source everything they worked on, that would be a really bad idea. This entire forum would be full of threads complaining that this or that script has bad documentation, is broken after some OS update, or supposedly hosed somebody's computer/project/whatever. 

[YEETMAN]

2 hours ago, maplepants said:

My understanding is that the Labs will be open sourcing their testing scripts/software but *not* that they'd just open source every bit of code they write.

 

If they did, the majority of the volume of open sourced LMG software would be crappy, poorly documented, and poorly maintained scripts. They'd be taking a major reputational hit for basically no benefit. If you think a README.md is all it takes for a company to open source some project without it being embarrassingly bad you just don't have experience with this problem. 

 

The company I work for currently is small, and wouldn't make a good example here. But one of the larger IT consulting firms in Canada is CGI. I've worked with their consultants before, and can assure you they've got lots of people writing lots of software. Doing everything from employee apps, to docker swarm and k8s orchestration templates. As best I can tell, this CGI France org is the extent of their open source presence. It contains 16 projects. These are not the only 16 projects that CGI France employees have ever written. They're just the only ones where open sourcing the project was worth the maintenance to not be an embarrassment to CGI France or CGI globally.

 

If the Labs team truly did open source everything they worked on, that would be a really bad idea. This entire forum would be full of threads complaining that this or that script has bad documentation, is broken after some OS update, or supposedly hosed somebody's computer/project/whatever. 

I'd like to clarify that I never suggested the labs team should open-source everything, as doing so indiscriminately might be counterproductive.
 

I work for a company (also small) deeply rooted in open-source software, where some of our public work can be traced back to our private repositories. (With appropriate licensing ofcourse) Furthermore, I've contributed to and maintained multiple repos with a significant following both public and private. While this might not seem significant, it gives me insights into the domain we're discussing. The primary focus here is not on open-sourcing everything. Instead, it's about a specific program that converts serial signals into mouse inputs.

Given its specialized function and intended platform – the Raspberry Pi Pico with its 2 MB onboard flash – it's clear that this is not some expansive application or service. Its compact nature makes it much simpler than a starter template on a npm project based on a new upcoming hip modern JavaScript framework. Going forward I would even guess that its one file. For such a program, a README would suffice for documentation. This isn't a complex microservice destined for extensive use by a vast audience. It's a straightforward mouse interpreter tailored for the Raspberry Pi Pico. It's unlikely to demand continuous updates or ongoing support.
 

I'm uncertain how the idea of the labs team needing to open source everything came about as I didn't mean overall in a sense thats absolutely everything but major projects. Another thing I would like to add is that they don't need extensive infrastructure or services related to this topic. While I've experienced the demands of teams that rely on scaling services from multiple companies, all requiring consistent updates and maintenance, that's not the case here.

[maplepants]

1 hour ago, YEETMAN said:

The primary focus here is not on open-sourcing everything. Instead, it's about a specific program that converts serial signals into mouse inputs.

These aren't completely separate topics though. They're nested topics. 

 

"Why don't they open source this project?", "Why don't they open source all projects this size or bigger", and "Why don't they open source everything" all have the same answer.

 

Sure they could maybe make an NPM module out of this. But why would they? They're never going to use this code again and I just don't see how one more abandoned on arrival module helps npm's already poor reputation for quality. Nor do I see it being much of a gain for LMG.

 

1 hour ago, YEETMAN said:

I work for a company (also small) deeply rooted in open-source software, where some of our public work can be traced back to our private repositories. (With appropriate licensing ofcourse) Furthermore, I've contributed to and maintained multiple repos with a significant following both public and private. While this might not seem significant, it gives me insights into the domain we're discussing.

This does give you experience in open source projects. But the topic here is the cost / benefit analysis for a media company like LMG open sourcing random bits of software they need once for a single project. 

 

If the "it's just one file" justification makes sense here, why wouldn't it make sense every time a project is "just one file"? You start open sourcing stuff like that and before you know it the LMG GitHub org is 3 projects worth using and 100 random bits of crap that were abandoned internally before they ever saw the light of day.

 

It just makes more sense for a company like LMG to open source projects only when it's something important and where open sourcing it has some other benefit for the business. Like with the testing stuff, they'll get useful contributions, and it's a great way to be open about how they evaluate the hardware and software they look at. 

[YEETMAN]

52 minutes ago, maplepants said:

These aren't completely separate topics though. They're nested topics. 

 

"Why don't they open source this project?", "Why don't they open source all projects this size or bigger", and "Why don't they open source everything" all have the same answer.

 

Sure they could maybe make an NPM module out of this. But why would they? They're never going to use this code again and I just don't see how one more abandoned on arrival module helps npm's already poor reputation for quality. Nor do I see it being much of a gain for LMG.

 

This does give you experience in open source projects. But the topic here is the cost / benefit analysis for a media company like LMG open sourcing random bits of software they need once for a single project. 

 

If the "it's just one file" justification makes sense here, why wouldn't it make sense every time a project is "just one file"? You start open sourcing stuff like that and before you know it the LMG GitHub org is 3 projects worth using and 100 random bits of crap that were abandoned internally before they ever saw the light of day.

 

It just makes more sense for a company like LMG to open source projects only when it's something important and where open sourcing it has some other benefit for the business. Like with the testing stuff, they'll get useful contributions, and it's a great way to be open about how they evaluate the hardware and software they look at. 

Indeed, while open-sourcing a single file might not be the best approach, its primary purpose is for archival. For software or other items that were no longer in active use or deemed less critical, we placed them in an organization dedicated solely to archival. This could be a suitable solution in this instance.

In essence, it's a more reliable form of cold storage than uploading it to an ad-infested file host or not open at all.

 

Quote

If the "it's just one file" justification makes sense here, why wouldn't it make sense every time a project is "just one file"? You start open sourcing stuff like that and before you know it the LMG GitHub org is 3 projects worth using and 100 random bits of crap that were abandoned internally before they ever saw the light of day.

In the company under discussion, most lab activities center on testing and other related tasks. For open source ofcourse in most cases, work isn't consolidated into a single file, with the exception of unique cases where the board's flash size is smaller than some configuration files like in this case and I expect their normal projects to be larger overall. This mouse project to be one of those edge cases to help the video go on as they have knowledge in this work but we overall don't see LTT do projects like these.

When it comes to videos, there could be a central org for main and a archive org for niche projects that houses repositories for all projects, detailing the work completed on each. Even if only one video has covered a project, if management finds renewed interest in it, viewer feedback can be invaluable. Should a project restart and developers require assistance, they can simply open the floodgates, and share the link on the forum.

Furthermore, adopting an open-source and well-documented system can be incredibly valuable in a managerial context. Regardless of the scale of our company, even when developing something as straightforward as a REST API, thorough documentation is crucial. This ensures that if a critical team member becomes unavailable and a product issue arises, the team is well-equipped to address it. "If person a goes to holiday and product b breaks"

This is not the case with the current project we are talking about but it is still a good practice to follow to improve project planning and deadline estimations not only for this project but for anything that is taken up by a team.

Also not sure what you mean by
 

Quote

Sure they could maybe make an NPM module out of this. But why would they? They're never going to use this code again and I just don't see how one more abandoned on arrival module helps npm's already poor reputation for quality. Nor do I see it being much of a gain for LMG.

Quote

Its compact nature makes it much simpler than a starter template on a npm project based on a new upcoming hip modern JavaScript framework.

I meant this as the compact nature of this project is so simple that even a simple react app starter template is bigger than this mouse projects flash upload. A mouse interpreter on npm would be absolutely useless, I think we had a miscommunication there.

[LMGcommunity]

8 hours ago, maplepants said:

This is a common sentiment, among people who've never taken an internal project and open sourced it.

 

5 hours ago, YEETMAN said:

This is definitely true but having something out there is better than nothing.

I appreciate the cordial discussion you two had about the topic. We're still seeing if it's feasible for us to release the code.