Building a Custom Air Mouse Without Any 3D Printing
Misfit Maker designed a DIY “Air Mouse” with capacitive touch media controls.
It is hard to think of any fabrication technology that is more useful to makers than 3D printing. With even just an inexpensive entry-level 3D printer, a maker can quickly and easily create all kinds of accurate and functional parts. But plenty of makers lack the budget or space for a 3D printer, which is when we get to see the forgotten arts of traditional crafting techniques. Misfit Maker’s Air Mouse is one impressive example of a tech device built without any 3D printing.
This is the kind of handheld, wireless mouse that people often use when giving presentations. It doesn’t require a desktop and instead has several buttons for navigation. In this case, it also has media control buttons.
Misfit Maker’s Air Mouse would be cool either way, but it especially stands out because its body/enclosure was crafted by hand. That’s the kind of thing that most makers today wouldn’t attempt without a 3D printer — or maybe a CNC mill, if they’re particularly well-equipped. Misfit Maker, however, constructed this almost entirely from foam board.
Watching the construction process is a treat, because it is almost like seeing origami take shape. Using simple printed templates, Misfit Maker cut the 2D sheet of foam board into small pieces. Those were then folded and glued together to build up to a 3D structure. That structure is precise enough to hold the electronic components securely inside. And the buttons are capacitive touch pads, so the structure even integrates strips of copper tape.
The Air Mouse’s Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-C3 development board monitors those capacitive touch buttons through an MPR121 module, which dramatically simplifies the detection and debouncing of presses. The device also contains an MPU6050 gyro/accelerometer to detect motion. Power comes from a very small rechargeable lithium battery.
Misfit Maker even dressed the device up with some nifty carbon fiber-look vinyl. But most of us lack the skill and patience to craft something like this by hand. So, Misfit Maker also uploaded 3D-printable STL files for people like us.
And because this Air Mouse uses somewhat standardized Bluetooth Low Energy commands, it should work with most modern devices. That includes those running iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, and more.
