Since this is a full screen 1280x1024 project I have included a few screen shots of what it looks like. The idea is that the images are arranged as if in a room on display. Four images per row, five rows arranged in 3D space. The user navigates through them with X and Y input from the mouse. Y controls movement along the Z-axis and X controls movement along the X-axis.

This is the starting position, mouse position at (640,0).








This is the device I made. It is a physical representation of the image arrangement on the screen. Unfortunately due to an unexpectedly diminutive scale I was not able to put miniature prints of the photos onto it. The idea is to have the image gallery projected onto a wall so that it would be displayed at a very large scale. The controller would then be designed to look like a small scale version of the "room" with the user navigating around looking at the pictures. This is essentially a reversed etch-a-sketch. That is, using the pin to control the knobs.

Materials used:
Cardboard, dental floss, paper clips, tape, glue, and an old roller-ball mouse.

This is a view from the front. The pattern you see mirrors the arrangement of the images in the gallery with the starting position being at the top center.


A view from behind. A "user's eye view" if you will.
I never realized just how handy dental floss could be. Cotter pins made from paper clips and cardboard runners were added to keep the front and rear panels in place.




The guts of machine.
A cardboard carriage held in place by quick release pins fashioned from paper clips carrying what is left of the mouse.






One of the bigger pains of this project was getting the floss to stay centered on the rollers. I cut a groove in the cradle holding the front roller, that helped tremendously. Unfortunately I had already cut off the piece for the side roller so I simply had to get adequate tension in the line and work it until it was centered. Dreadfully tedious.