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http://www.instructables.com/id/Take-apart-an-optical-mouse/
Author:westfw
Middle aged geek username also works at yahoo.com, mac.com, comcast.net, wharton-10.arpa
http://www.instructables.com/id/Take-apart-an-optical-mouse/
Image Notes 1. Screw 2. Teflon pad that used to cover the screw! 3. Screw! 4. Screw! 5. anti-friction pads with screws hidden underneath.
Image Notes 1. More screws 2. Third PCB with mouse wheel and switches
Image Notes 1. Camera LED 2. USB cable with connector 3. Tail LED.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Take-apart-an-optical-mouse/
Image Notes 1. Eye illumination LED. 2. Tail LED 3. USB cable with connector 4. 2-pin resonator for USB micro
Step 4: So What Have We Got? Clippable and Unpluggable: LEDs and cables.
So is there anything inside that we can use? And how about hacking the mouse to make it do something unexpected? To start with, there are the LEDs. 1) Two ultrabright red LEDs, with pretty long leads. One of these is the "tail" LED, which has no purpose other than "art." The tail LED could be replaced with other color LEDs, or LEDs that blink. Or you can take it out and the mouse should continue to work fine without it. These LEDs have long enough leads that you can probably just clip them off with wire cutters and use them elsewhere; no de-soldering required. 2) It's a bit sad, but true, that sometimes the most useful bit you can get out of a piece of modern electronics is a bit of wire. In this case, the mouse has a nice cable with a USB connector at one end and a little PCB connector at the other. USB plugs are a useful source of power for custom electronics, so this cable, with little modification, may be one of the more useful bits in the mouse. Stripped of its outer insulation and separated into individual wires, we have a source of particularly flexible stranded insulated wire, potentially useful for all sorts of "wearable" electronics.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Take-apart-an-optical-mouse/
Image Notes 1. Eye illumination LED. 2. Tail LED 3. USB cable with connector 4. 2-pin resonator for USB micro
Image Notes 1. Camera LED 2. USB cable with connector 3. Tail LED.
Image Notes 1. 3-pin resonator under shield 2. microswitch 3. Optical scrollwheel parts 4. Microswitch 5. Microswitch 6. Microswitches
http://www.instructables.com/id/Take-apart-an-optical-mouse/
Step 7: Conclusion...
Done! Wish I could think of something more profound to say.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Take-apart-an-optical-mouse/
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Comments
12 comments Add Comment
anthonyyy0 says:
Aug 10, 2010. 3:30 PM REPLY you obviously know a lot about mice right? If i took an optical mouse apart would it have tact switches inside for the left/ right mouse click buttons? if not would i be able to solder tact switches to the places where the left/right clickers/buttons hit the board so that i can relocate buttons? (Im making a NES Mouse :D) Thanks for any help you can give!
westfw says:
Aug 10, 2010. 4:49 PM REPLY Yes. You can see the buttons as black rectangles with gray "buttons." Typically the casing of the mouse will have various cleverly designed plastic bits that end up pushing the relatively standard microswitch-style buttons. And typically you can either remove and relocate the buttons, or just parallel alternate buttons (watch out if the mouse electronics connects to all three terminals of the switch, though.)
Colonel88 says:
nice ible i REALLY want to change the mouse so the bottom light thingie was blue so then it would look mad kewl.
omnibot says:
Aug 27, 2009. 1:24 PM REPLY Is there some software to let you use this in any way you like? I'm thinking robotics where the optics could be used for positioning, the wheel for touch-sense and the buttons as bump-detectors. Any suggestions? I've seen some use a PIC as an adaptive interface but software to change it's use from a PC-based robot?
Jun 2, 2009. 6:35 AM REPLY lol i have the same mouse too. other than that great instructable 4/5 stars. (i have more than one of these) (i have an army of mice) lol im crazy
EaglesNestOne says:
U have same mouse i'm using lol. Give you stars just for that lol ;D
TechnoMancer says:
the DIP through hole sensor is probably more useful to you they do have documentation on the protocols usually I2C or SPI
Charlie1138 says:
Apr 1, 2008. 5:53 PM REPLY I have a logitech mouse I was trying to take apart to make some other project and it looked like there was no solder under the microswitches on the pins.. it also seemed like there was a plastic coating on the bottom of the circuit board holding those pins in.. have you seen anything like this? I tried to heat the solder and scrape it off the pins(if there was any there) but it seemed like there was no sodler there or maybe I didn't have my soldering iron hot enough?
stasterisk says:
Have you ever used the optical bits to get position feedback on your robot?
westfw says:
Dec 27, 2007. 4:30 PM REPLY I have no robot :-( Are you talking about the "eye" sensor or the lesser "wheel" sensor? You might be better off using a nearly-assembled mouse rather than individual bits; a PS2 interface is probably easier to talk to than the raw mouse chip. (One of the things I've wanted to do is BEAM robotics sort of circuit that would permit a robot to walk in a straight line even if it has two mis-matched motors driving two wheels... "walking in a straight line with one bad leg.")
GorillazMiko says:
coollllll :-)
http://www.instructables.com/id/Take-apart-an-optical-mouse/
ll.13 says:
Two LED's I'm guessing the tail LED is for eye candy? 0.o
http://www.instructables.com/id/Take-apart-an-optical-mouse/