Replacing The LED In An Optical Mouse?

Jeffv323 writes: "I was thinking the other day, what would my Logitech optical mouse look like with a superbright blue LED ^[?] ? I couldn't find any Web sites that had any technical specifications on how the optical sensor works, so I am not sure whether this idea might work. All the sites I did go to said the sensor was actually a small camera taking 1500 pictures a second. If this is true it seems like my idea could work." Has anyone out there replaced the LED in his optical mouse, out of necessity or curiosity? Have you found any good information about wavelength tolerances, voltages, etc? Anything that can handle a blue LED ought to have one in it, IMHO.

Comments

Soldering

[Clubber Lang]

Just wanted to point out that the article mentions using a soldering *GUN*, which should be fine in this case but generally not reccomended for electronics.

These tips won't really be useful to people with electronics experience, but I'd rather not see anybody ruin a mouse or other electronics by making an easily avoided beginner's mistake.

Mouse cicuitry isn't exactly the most complex stuff in the world, but when working on electronics projects it's really better to use some type of soldering pencil. Soldering guns put out waaaaay more heat then needed, and produce some pretty nasty electromagnetic fields. These two combinded can fry an IC in no time flat (shouldn't be directly soldering an IC anyways, but that's a different topic).

Oh yeah, and DON'T use acid core solder.

Soldering and desoldering tips

Re:yes sir

[duplicate-nickname]

Warning: we have found that our blue LED actually worsened responsiveness on reflexive surfaces.

There is a reason they the mouse came with a red LED to begin with....

yes sir

[Anonymous Coward]

right away sir http://www.taconuts.com/articles/2000/dec/3/page1. php here's the light mouse mod you ordered, would you like fries with that?