TRICK mouse keeps THE screen SAVER at bay

[Jerry] wrote in to share a little gadget he built to solve a issue he was having at work. You see, every computer in his office has a policy-enforced idle timeout, requiring the individual to go into a password in buy to regain gain access to to their desktop.

This is a significant pain, since he sporadically uses an old computer for the sole function of monitoring some applications running in his data center. With the computer timing out every 10 minutes, he is constantly required to go into his password in buy to take a 10 second glimpse at the screen to ensure whatever is OK.

Rather than circumvent the screen saver utilizing a regional security policy or by implementing a microcontroller-based signal generator, he opted to produce a mechanical solution instead. His computer’s optical mouse resides inside a wooden frame, as well as is periodically swept from side to side by an ATmega-controlled servo, keeping the screensaver permanently at bay.

Call it a hack, call it a kludge, call it what you will. All we understand is that while we may have done it a little differently, it works just fine for [Jerry], as well as it generates all sorts of fascinating conversation to boot.

Stick around for a quick video presentation of his mouse wiggler box.