I am currently working on an audio project which requires a phototransistor in order to pick up a signal transmitted across a beam of light. I was wondering, is at all possible to hack an optical mouse's internal CMOS sensor to output an analog signal?
The sensor that I have to work with is described in detail on this PDF http://www.iammp.org/design/files/h2000.pdf
I noticed in one particular hack, that turned a similar CMOS sensor into a tiny B&W scanner, that the chip has a pretty decent gradient range. Since the signal that is being received depends on changes in the light intensity of the beam to carry a signal, I would think the chip could detect those changes fairly well.