Motorized aim assist system uses a moving mousepad for laser-accurate headshots — a cannibalized GRBL drawing system and computer vision software deliver perfect shots

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Hardware aim assist: your mousepad moves to make up for your slow or poor aiming.

Motorized mouse pad aim assist system
(Image credit: Basically Homeless )

What do you do if you are so good at video games that playing against family and friends becomes drained of all its entertainment value? If you are Nick, at the Basically Homeless YouTube channel, you combine woodworking, hardware hacking, and software shenanigans to enhance your friendly foes with a slick, mechanized, mousepad-driven aim-assist system that imparts expert-level headshot skills. The system uses a computer vision model to monitor the screen and identify targets, and then moves the mousepad underneath the mouse to zero in on the perfect shot. In practice, this worked so well and so transparently that some of Nick’s opponents began to think they had elite-level aiming skills.

I Built a Mousepad That Aims for You - YouTube I Built a Mousepad That Aims for You - YouTube
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He would pick a few different transport solutions before settling on using the gantry and controller board from an Xdraw A4 drawing board to move the mousepad physically. Thankfully, that choice still fits with his earlier decisions regarding the table routing and the mousepad.

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Motorized mouse pad aim assist system
(Image credit: Basically Homeless )

Hacking to gain control of the drawing board revealed that it had a commonplace GRBL controller, so it wasn’t too complicated to command and control this stripped-down device. With this determined, Nick could get on with fitting the mousepad movement mechanism, stripped from the drawing board, under the table, and attaching the mousepad on top. A little bit of 3D printing was required to make the perfect inserts/spacers for the mousepad fitting and sliding mechanism.

The next step would have been mightily complicated had it not been for the availability of the YOLO-based computer vision model. Nick’s software implementation used this model to monitor the screen. Based on what was happening on the screen, the computer vision system would calculate the required motion and send serial commands to the mousepad’s GRBL-driven motion rig. This way, when a target was detected within a generous radius of the crosshair, the mechanized gantry swiftly adjusted the aim to become a laser-accurate headshot.

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Motorized mouse pad aim assist system
(Image credit: Basically Homeless )

One of the best illustrations of how slickly the mechanical mousepad's aim assist worked was provided by Olivia, towards the end of the video. To start, she believed she was naturally good at eSports gaming. However, Nick quietly disabled the aim assist “for science,” and his opponent’s mood turned a little sour, accusing him of cheating… So, he turned it back on in the spirit of good sportsmanship.

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Mark Tyson
Mark Tyson
News Editor
7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • hotaru251
    this is hwy pvp shooter games will always be unfair...you can try all you want to block cheaters but someone somewhere will fidn a way around it to cheat and have an advantage
    Reply
  • salgado18
    And, by filming the screen and sending commands through another device, no anti-cheat in the world would detect it.
    Reply
  • NotAnotherTimmy
    salgado18 said:
    And, by filming the screen and sending commands through another device, no anti-cheat in the world would detect it.
    If you think algorithms could detect this type of aiming, you haven't been paying attention.
    Reply
  • blppt
    salgado18 said:
    And, by filming the screen and sending commands through another device, no anti-cheat in the world would detect it.
    Good, then maybe we can do away with kernel level anticheats.
    Reply
  • arch1e
    I love this guy. He's a genuine treasure. Very clever in his concepts and execution and he's an excellent example of why anti-cheat software doesn't need to be so intrusive. Hopefully, one day we'll be able to get rid of kernel level anti-cheat through algorithms refined by devs targeting whackadoodle shenaniganry such as this.
    Reply
  • derekullo
    NotAnotherTimmy said:
    If you think algorithms could detect this type of aiming, you haven't been paying attention.
    Algorithms could detect this.
    Unsure what point you are trying to make lol!
    Reply
  • nrdwka
    blppt said:
    Good, then maybe we can do away with kernel level anticheats.
    There is more chance what kernel level anti-cheat go away if Microsoft decide finally to close kernel access for them. (And biggest beneficiary will be.Linux:) )
    Reply