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"Red is Dead" Optical Mice LED Change
A reader sent us the
HOWTO for changing that red LED on your fancy-pants new optical mouse to blue - or, I suppose any other color. I think I'm fine with what I've got - although, the glass tops on tables does make using optical mice a pain there.
Can you use a black light?
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
However, upon pluggin my mouse into the computer, the logitech logo and mouse in general glowed blue!!! I was happy. Although the LED on the bottom was red, they had an *extra* LED that was blue for the logo and the *glowing* plastic. That made my day and it involved NO soldering.
I do have to say that a blue LED mouse looks about 10X cooler than a red one. But it looks like this type of project will only interest serious modders who have some cash to spend.
How about black light on a white mouse pad? That would be pretty nifty.
-hero.
Personally I would rather have blue to match the blue case on my computer but the mouse that I have isn't all that responsive as it is and if it gets any worse, it wouldn't be usable.
Maybe one of the mod sites could do a test to see which colors offer the best performance and which colors should be avoided.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
The problem is that this can seriously degrade performance.
What I want to know is: Would it be possible to come up with a mod design in which it switches between red and blue? (Red when it's moving, Blue when it's idle)
I noticed the light turns off when the mouse is Idle with my intellimouse, maybe this could be switched around a bit.
A great scene is a great film (and I presume a great play, but I was too young to see it at the time).
The line is, of course, from The Wiz, which starred Diana Ross (Dorothy) Michael Jackson (Scarecrow) and Nipsey Russell (Tinman). My favorite song was "You Can't Win", which was sung by MJ. It's basically the three laws of thermodymamics, turned into a song about pessimism.
The "Red is Dead" line comes from a scene were they first get to the Emerald City. Everyone's dancing around this huge city square that's all lit green. Everyone's actually wearing white, but because of the lighting it looks green. Then there's an announcement that green is no longer in and the new color is red. Lights change, everyone is in red, and the dance continues. A few minutes later, the announcement proclaims, "Red is Dead" and I think the color moves on to gold.
This film was made at the hight of the disco craze, and Diana Ross was very much a part of it. I was kind of suprised to see her poking such fun at the whirling fashion trends that came and went in weeks in the late 70s.
Wouldn't an outside-of-the-visible-spectrum light work? The red gets annoying when playing at 4:am in the dark...
Works great. I've had an IR LED one of my mouse for quite a while now. It's hooked up to my jukebox PC which is out in the den. I got tired of having the mouse randomly flashing from dim to bright and back whenever it thought that maybe something was moving underneath it. It liked to do it the most when I was trying to watch movies. Dropped in an IR LED, and it works great. No more flashing.
I have a Logitech optical/wireless mouse which works on just about any surface, such as:
- My flat, smooth, featureless desktop;
- The crap that usually sits on that desktop: plain printed paper, smooth & shiny take out pizza menu's etc.
- My trousers, in case the desktop is too full to move a mouse over.
- My cats! One is extremely black and short-haired, the other a multicolor longhaired one. The mouse works reasonably well on either of them, when one of them lies down on the only clear spot on my desk.
- Wood grain of any description.
Get a decent brand optical mouse, it is worth the higher price.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I don't understand how this can just work, you may be able to swap for a yellow or green LED, but a blue LED has a much higher activation voltage, which would mean that either the red LED was being overdriven, or there's a chip in charge of changing the voltage somehow because it was designed to handle other color LEDs as well. The blue LED should be really dim if the voltage is for a red LED (GaAS).
Obviously this replacement worked for the story's author, but there is a technical point I haven't seen raised yet: Blue LED's have a much higher forward voltage drop than red LED's, and will often not turn on all the way in a circuit designed for red LED's.
The typical red LED circuit is a resistor connected to 5 volts (sometimes 3.3) in series with the LED. The resistor limits the current that can pass through the LED. The value of the resistor is based on some typical forward voltage across the LED. That is, the 5 volts will end up being partially across the resistor, and partially across the LED. The resistor is calculated so that the typical voltage drop will yield the desired current.
The voltage drop on a red LED is about 1 or 1.5 volts or something (I don't remember exactly) but blue LED's ca drop around 3 or 4 volts (IIRC). This throws off the calculations used in selecting a current-limiting resistor for the typical (red) LED circuit. A 3.3 volt circuit might not even turn a blue LED on at all.
The best way to turn on a blue LED is to put it in series with a simple current source (this can just be one matched pair of transistors with a current setting resistor on one of them) or, when possible, to use 12 volts with a current-limiting resistor in series.
Green and yellow are close enough to red that they don't pose a problem.
MM
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I ran across this . Its a really cool mouse that has 24(!) user selectable LED colors. You change the color by hitting a switch on the mouse. Now that's cool. Next is to have a red, green and blue LED with variabe instensities...
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
I have just checked around some of the well known UK suppliers (Maplin Electronics and RS Electronics) to find these ultra bright LED's in blue, but I will be damned if I can find em.
The very brightest I saw was 2000MCD - and that was being sold as the highest brightness at nearly $7US for a single LED.
Suggestions on where to buy from please?
Thanks!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
All I got was a knowing smile and a shrug.
What I do know from experience on my woodgrain desk, it that an optical mouse works VERY well on a mousepad compared to the normal desk where the cursor would tend to jump around a lot.
I love my optical mouse mainly for the smooth tracking and the lack of "mouse smegma" that builds up on the balls.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
It is not the first. I saw one site last month check the site referrer and if you came from Slashdot it gave a message to "Go Away!"
I've always changed them. Some of the fun color's I've used: The logitec dual-sensor: blue and gree Old logitec optical (with blue glowing logo): white New logitec opticals: blue And one more I did just to see if it would work: an Infrared LED (from a remote control) in one of the newer Logitec opticals. It's great, make people think that your mouse's light is burned out, but somehow still works fine.
I do have to say that a blue LED mouse looks about 10X cooler than a red one.
Here's Why
After reading this article yesterday, I pondered changing the LED in my mouse. Has slashdot implmented some sort of psychic cookies or something?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
This is a cool mod to do if you have a mouse with clear sides :D (The $12 Logitech model B12 comes to mind..)
On my Logitech B12 I desoldered the factory LED, and put in its place a cut in half CD-ROM passthrough cable plug. I then went and bought 1 of every color LED that http://www.superbrightleds.com sells. When I want to change colors I just pull the LED leads out of the plug and pop it out of its plastic holder/lens.
I've measured the voltage being delivered to every color LED when in the mouse: Aqua (max Vf 3.6), Blue (Vf 3.5), Green (Vf 3.5) and White (Vf 3.4) all get 3.35-3.5v Red (Vf 2.2), Yellow (Vf 2.4), and Orange all get 2.3v
All of these LEDs are rated 5000mcd and above.
Every color tracks just like the factory Red LED. And in some cases better! The White, Blue, Aqua and Green LEDs track much better on shinny surfaces. On the same surface Red, Yellow, and Orange LEDs just make the cursor jump around.
I did this a few weeks ago in a fit of boredom at work after reading about it in some article here @ /.
:)
Since blue LED's have a voltage drop of nearly double red LEDs (~3.5v vs. ~1.9v), I wondered if it would be a problem. I replaced both reds in my wired Intellimouse Optical USB with blue 470 nm Nichias and the sensor appeared not to mind the shift of 200nm; it works fine. Nor did it appear to mind the ~33% drop in LED current, but as these are high-output blues, it's possible they are more efficient than the reds it replaced and are generating similar optical power. Or, the sensor isn't really picky.
My mouse has a red translucent base so I changed out the LED that illuminates that as well, hoping for a nice purple maybe, but the plastic's response is too sharp. No blue gets through at all. Maybe if I use more current....
This sig washed every five years whether it needs it or not!
I got an iopty jr from macally. The mouse has a mostly clear body and of course, in the store it wasn't actually hooked up. I found the bright ass red LED to be annoying. So I purchased an infrared LED to quelch it. Works wonderfully.
I have a Logitec cordless optical, same design as the dual optical, batteries instead of a second sensor. But I find it a bit bulky, so I bought a Logitec MX300 mouse. Same precision, but a lot smaller and lighter. Well... it's a matter of preference...