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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.
You don't really stare at the light under your mouse do you?
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.
although, the glass tops on tables does make using optical mice a pain there.
Rub some sandpaper over the part of the glass where the mouse will be. Problem solved!
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.
Cool! I myself wanted to write a long FAQ about how to do an analogous thing for traditional mice. i.e. how to use a whiteboard marker to change the ball to match your decor.....but got bogged down by technical details...perhaps someone can help me...
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
Next on Slashdot, a complete HOWTO on adding those leftover red LEDs to your car's window washer nozzles.
I mean, really. I know that we've been getting sillier lately, but this? Not exactly News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. Is it?
In unrelated news, a Japanese study shows another link between computer use and health problems. But hey, that sort of thing just isn't as k3wl....
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
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?
I think I'm fine with what I've got - although, the glass tops on tables does make using optical mice a pain there.
I thought I was fine with what I had too, until I got a glass tabletop... and started working without pants. Now I just cry every time I look down.
Best Windows Freeware
Aw, MAN! And I was just getting caught up on all of my ridiculous case modding and converting my Geo Storm into a Geo Storm "Type R"...
(Like Heston) Damn you. DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!
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.
In this post about the lego cryogenic mouse mod.
I'd be worried that the detector might only be sensitive to longer, redder wavelengths. It would probably be worth checking on what component the mice use, and what its specifications are.
From the article: With the LED's now exposed, gently heat each side of the LED's carefully pulling on them until they are removed from the PCB. Take your time. This is actually the hardest part of the whole mod.
This shouldn't be the hardest part of the mod. Solder-removal braiding and suction solder removers are cheaply available and highly recommended. Once you remove the solder, removing the LEDs is much easier and safer. (No flying hot solder!)
Blue has a shorter wavelength than red.
The reason red LEDs are used is because they are the cheapest, as longer wavelength bandgap devices are easier to make.
The exception to this logic is infrared, since LEDs are typically used for visual indication. Infrared LEDs are useless for this purpose so manufacturers don't make nearly as many of them...
How many Slashdot'ers does it take to change an LED?
Answer: The ISP hosting the site is about to find out....
I did this on an older style Microsoft Intellimouse, using a light blue LED from Radio Shack. And they're not kidding about losing responsiveness. I couldn't play Counter-Strike anymore or any other games which required me to move the mouse quickly. The mouse would just lose tracking and the cursor would freeze on the screen. I swapped the original red LED back in, and what do you know, it works fine again.
I don't recall the URL, but about a year ago someone did a comparison of about 10 different LED colors they tried in an optical mouse, and found that red is the best. (Duhh)
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
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.
The faint glow of a red light while looking at pr0n just seems natural.
Trolling is a art,
Works fine for me
I'm guessing red LED's are used in the first place because of the cost. I read somewhere that red LED's are pennies and blue LED's are like $2.00 USD each. I probably read that on the Internet so take it with a grain of salt.
I'm wondering how many more blue LED's we can take. I remember the first thing I seen with them was the Sony PlayStation 2. If you go in to Circuit City or Best Buy, it seems like EVERY stereo, DVD player, TV, laptop, etc has blue LED's! I'm sure consumers like them, but I can see this fad passing soon.
If anyone opens up an old optical mouse, the kind where you need a special mouse pad, make sure you don't remove the infared LED and replace it with a blue one
Tape a mouse pad under the glass top.
.. when you spill solder all over your MS mouse circuit board and ruin it you have to:
a) Call Bill Gates a poopy-head
b) Tell everyone "if MS included a schematic, this wouldn't have happened."
c) Repeat.
Yes I'm joking silly.
Trolling is a art,
Yes, red LED's are cheaper, but there is another reason, too.. They also want to use the cheapest CCD available. That's going to be a monochrome CCD that's sensitive to larger wavelengths. A red LED is going to work better on that.
With that in mind, an Infrared LED would probably work great with optical mice and their cheap CCD's.. maybe even better than red. You might have to remove an IR filter from in front of the CCD, and be wary of using them in a room with flourescent lighting, but it'd be good to try. How cool is an optical mouse with apparently NO light?!?!
If you want the "cool" blue look for whatever twisted ass reason, just use a blue LED and an IR LED in paralell. You might have to play with different led's/led voltages to get the right balance between a responsive mouse and the cool blue glow your riceboy heart desires, but again, it should work.
~GoRK
Orange is the new pink!
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
... like there's no tomorrow.
I have two Logitech wireless mice: one at work, one at home. I spend comparable amounts of time logged in both places (*sigh*). The one at home is a mechanical mouse, the one at work is an optical mouse.
My optical mouse has been through five sets of AA batteries in the amount of time it took my mechanical mouse to finish off one set of AAAs.
And you can't use rechargables, because these bad boys need the full 1.7 volts from those Alkaline cells -- the 1.3 from NiCd just won't cut it.
That's just nasty.
Every time I see one of these articles, this one in particular, it reminds me of the blokes who spend thousands of pounds to put UV tubes under their cars
However, the main difference I can see between the two is that when the car modders have finished, they drive around town and OCCASIONALLY some girl stops, thinks its cool, and gets in with them, while mouse modders can only use their accomplishment to click on "sign me up" for yet another porn site
Here's a link for the same mod with a Logitech Mouse.
www.skybusiness.com/ntanner
I've done this, and it works fine. Note that there are two Radio shack LED's that are blue, one that outputs 2600 MCD's at 4.5 volts, the other 300 at 6 volts. I used the brighter one, and have no skipping problems at all.
Radio Shack
www.christopherlewis.com
Red light has the shortest wavelength possible, which is why it is used for mice. A small movement will then correspond to a large number of wavelengths, making tracking the mouse's position easier. If you switch to blue, the longest possible wavelength, your mouse will be essentially useless.
Uh, wrong. Red LED's emit at wavelengths of 640-700 nanometers, while blue LED's emit in the 430-475 nm range. Red LED's are used because they're cheap and plentiful, not because they have the shortest wavelength.
Besides, even a high-res, 1600DPI optical mouse only has to detect changes on the order of 625,000 nanometers, so any wavelength within the spectrum of commercially-available LED's will do, so long as the sensor will pick it up.
A blue LED doesn't help me get any work done. Sure, it may look cool and impress chicks, but even cooler would be an ALL KNOWING, ALL SEEING MOUSE, that wouldn't rely on me to push it around the mouse pad to get work done. It would do all the work for me because it would be that smart. And I would fall asleep during working hours.
It would be pretty damn good at playing quake as well, much better than me.
If I could find a mouse like that, well heck, then it could have a blue LED. Until then though, only red for it, until it gets smarter and starts doing some damn work for a change instead of just sitting there until I push it.
Easy guys, I put my pants on one leg at a time. The difference is after I put on my pants I make gold records!
The Laser pointer cat exerciser is patented - the owners have been notified and will contact you to arrange easy payment options.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Sith (evil programmers) use the red ones. Blue, green and now purple are used by the good guys :)
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Here's a link to Google's cached version of the page so people can actually see it.
: www.extrememhz.com/mouseled1.shtml+mouseled1.shtml &hl=en&ie=UTF-8
http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:pYdsFS2ayMgJ
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
Wouldn't an outside-of-the-visible-spectrum light work? The red gets annoying when playing at 4:am in the dark...
If they're going through all the trouble of changing the LED's to blue, why not change them into a superintelligent shade of blue!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The site is still up for me but just in case, here's a mirror:
http://home.attbi.com/~bernhard36/mouseled1.html
http://home.attbi.com/~bernhard36/mouseled2.html
http://home.attbi.com/~bernhard36/mouseled3.html
though page one links to two and two to three fine on the mirror
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
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...
quite entertaining that a physics genius as you self proclaim knows nothing about light and wavelengths.
Red and Infrared are the absolute slowest of the light and hence the longest wavelengths... this is why you get something called a red shift when objects travel away from you at high speed.
Blue being just below violet and being at the top of the visible spectrum have the absolute shortest wavelength just before ultraviolet. This give you a blue shift for objects travelling toward you at high speed.
Note when I mean high speed, I am talking about thousands upon thousands upon thousands of miles per hour.. none of this paltry human achieveable speeds... Being a physics genius you know this....
the color of the light has nothing to do with tracking, nor does the optical mouse work anything like you think (read that as assume as you obviousally never looked up how they actually work). Please, please, oh please... if you want to have the audacity as touting that you are any kind of genius do not spew forth fecies.... it make you look bad.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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).
Well, I've never bought LEDs from them, but I know they have a pretty good selection of VERY bright LEDs of practically any color.
http://hosfelt.com/en-us/dept_54.html
I am considering hanging myself by my cordless mouse.
Don't be ridiculous. In saying "used to", the original poster is clearly laying a claim to prior art.
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
--
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
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
Red was the color of the first LEDs, which is why it's still the cheapest (though marginally). Therefore they also have the longest development history. More importantly, long-wavelength semiconductors are usually more efficient -- not that this makes any difference in desktop systems though.
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
In other words, this article is: Slashdot - How to Change a Lightbulb!
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
Blue is the new high-tech color. As well as titanium. I read that somewhere.
;)
Must be because of the new PowerBook and Aqua.
mbbac
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!!"
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.
Blue everywhere
...
Yo listen up: here's a story
About a little guy
That lives in a blue world
And all day and all night and everything he sees is
Just blue like him inside and outside
Blue his house with a blue little window
And a blue Corvette and everything is blue for him
And himself and everybody around
'Cause he aint got nobody to listen:
I'm blue (da ba dee),I'm blue (da ba dee)
I'm blue (da ba dee),I'm blue (da ba dee)
I have a blue house with a blue window
Blue is the color of all that I wear
Blue are the streets and all the trees are too
I have a girlfriend and she is so blue
Blue are the people here that walk around
Blue like my Corvette it's standing outside
Blue are the words I say and what I think
Blue are the feeling that live inside me
I'm blue (da ba dee),I'm blue (da ba dee)
I have a blue house with a blue window
Blue is the color of all that I wear
Blue are the streets and all the trees are too
I have a girlfriend and she is so blue
Blue are the people here that walk around
Blue like my Corvette it's standing outside
Blue are the words I say and what I think
Blue are the feeling that live inside me
I'm blue (da ba dee),I'm blue (da ba dee)
Just blue like him inside and outside
Blue his house with a blue little window
And a blue Corvette and everything is blue for him
And himself and everybody around
'Cause he aint got nobody to listen:
I'm blue (da ba dee),I'm blue (da ba dee),I'm blue (da ba dee),I'm blue (da ba dee)
[alk]
The obvious reason NOT to do this.
On submarines and ships, they used to have only red lights inside when it was dark (or the person who had to go outside would wear red goggles inside). This was to preserve the ability to see detail in the dark. The eye's light sensors are able to recover quickly from red light, less so from other wavelengths.
Remember this at your next dimly-lit LAN party, where you've modded your computer and mouse with blue LEDs. And don't blame me when you trip and fall on the way to the fridge for another Mountain Dew. Or get fragged by someone you never saw, because your dark sensitivity was diminished after staring lovingly at your glowing blue mouse during respawn.
...
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.
go down so fast? This site is shutdown temporarily due to the slashdot effect.
I suppose "extreme" could refer to minimum.
You'd think they'd *want* a bunch of geeks reading this.
Maybe they could sell kits to change the LED color on your mice to recoup the bandwidth cost of a good slashdotting.
...I might break my mouse irreparably. And as always, I'd rather be Red than Dead!
--ducking--
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Follow the link: More like blue wig, red arse, sorry led.
Oh and the song is by Eiffel 65. And it's titled "Blue".
And it is extremely incredibly offensive (to my ears) techpop from Germany.
Um, IR is the best thing you can use.
All IR LEDs (except for maybe some outlandish ones, but none that I know of) are near-IR. Si isn't transparent to near-IR, it's transparent to far-IR (i.e. the type of IR given off by not-obscenely-hot objects). In fact, as others pointed out, most CCDs and CMOS sensors have their sensitivity peak in the near-IR area! (Note: This is the main principle that enables Sony NightShot mode. In most camcorders and digital cameras, there is an optical element that filters out near-IR light because it will utterly kill proper color rendition - In NightShot mode, this filter is moved out of the way, allowing more light in, which happens to be at the sensor's peak. Color rendition goes down the tubes, but recording something is better than recording nothing.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
As IR is where the peak of most CCD/CMOS imaging device's sensitivity is.
But for many reasons (volume, for one), high-brightness red LEDs are more plentiful and cheaper than IR. Red is nearly as good sensitivity-wise, but much cheaper.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Um, there is no such thing.
Infrared literally means something like, "below/before red". Theoretically infragreen exists... We call it yellow. Ultragreen exists to in the literal sense - But no one calls it that, they just say "blue".
Most imaging devices (Like the CCDs and photomultipliers used in machinery, including NV goggles) are most sensitive to IR. Also, IR is invisible to people without IR goggles, so if active illumination is used, it's IR.
Green is where the eye is most sensitive, but green light kills night vision. Also, red does not travel as far (This may be more of a psychological/eye sensitivity thing than physics) - Back in high school when I was on stage crew, white flashlights were *verboten* because the audience could see the spillover when they were used backstage. Red-filtered flashlights, OTOH, couldn't be seen by the audience.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
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!
it is not the wood grain but the sealant that is most likely causing the problem. If the laser reflects, things go awry. A piece of graph paper works wonders. The double LED mice also reduce the skipping noticeably.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Blue is Microsoft's Color. Therefore, blue is the color of choice for legacy users, and legacy equipment.
Uh, blue is IBM's color and has been for quite a while. Ever hear of "big blue" or "Deep Blue"?
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
I'm using a Microsoft Trackball Explorer 1.0 PS2/USB optical trackball right now. The big red marble pops out of the frame and you can throw it around the office.
The coolest thing about it is when I turn the lights in my office off - The ring around the ball glows, making the transparent red shell of the ball glow slightly - looks like I have the eye of sauron on my desk.
go here for a review of the thing, with pics and all. I love mine. Keeps the shoulder from burining after a long day of waving a mouse around (bad shoulder, motorcycle accident)
That article is quite interesting. Provides a nice overview of how blue LEDs came to be, and how they came to be all the rage.
Also, a neat piece of trivia on how Blaupunkt got it's name is on the second page.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
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.
Seriously, though, get some NiMH or LI batteries.
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
For me, the red light is too reminiscent the evil and almighty HAL. Just try playing an mp3 of 'Daisy Bell' while staring into your mouse's red light. See if you don't start pulling out PCI cards and breathing heavily.
Or for repairing a broken duck.
Personally, I prefer using DUCT tape for most applications, including removing warts. Doesn't work all that well for taping ducts, though.
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Since the site is slashdotted, here's an alternative article on the topic. Note the date: Dec 2000!
I guess this isn't _that_ new of a hack.
Get Logitech DUAL sensor optical, especially for gaming where you need to mix fast acurate moves with precision moves.
I wonder if you could use a multi-color led that adapts based on mouse state. Did anybody try that yet?
All these comments and I haven't seen a single cold war joke.
That's kinda dumb, as far as I know the receiver doesn't send feedback to the mouse concerning the strength of the signal it's getting, and regardless of distance to the receiver, the mouse transmits using the same signal strength, using the same amount of electricity.
I do have cordless mouse and keyboard, and I like it. I use rechargable batteries so that's less waste. I like it, I can move the mouse towards me without having the cable snag somewhere and stop me, and I can move the mouse away from me without running over the cable.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
I came acorss this mod one time and thought it would be incredibly cool with a blue LED instead, but I thought about it and the plexi used for the mouse wheel probably wouldn't be as grippy/nice feeling as the slightly rubbery surface of the wheel I had. I looked around and finally I found a mouse that came with a clear scroll wheel. it was the new m$ Blue Intellimouse. I bought it ($20 after a $10 rebate) and ordered some superbright blue LEDs. Once they came I hijacked voltage from the USB cable and put one directly behind the clear scroll wheel. It lights up quite nicely and looks awesome, Then I replaced the red LED in the back and the one for the sensor with blue ones. It worked fine and it was bright enough that the responsiveness didn't drop, but... all microsoft optical mice have the clear red plastic for the bottom. It glowed quite brightly when there were red LEDs in it, but i unfortunately discovered that the red plastic completely filters out the blue light. So the only light coming from it is out of the wheel, and of course the bottom if you pick it up. I attached some longer leads to the one in the back and and siliconed it directly too the little red oval in the butt of the mouse and managed to get a faint purple glow out of it. It still looks pretty cool, but it dissapointingly glows less. My TI-83+ Silver on the other hand glows very nicely with the 2 blue LEDs i put in it.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Okay. This solution is kind of technically involved, so please just hold on tight.
1. Take a piece of paper, about letter size (8.5 x 11 inches) and set it on top of the glass surface.
2. secure it with tape or glue.
3. Mouse on new paper surface. Consider this a table-top surface-mount upgrade, if you will. This is the PaperSurface 1.0 upgrade, the six-second solution to most of my mousing problems.
I think this is one of those problems that takes less time to actually fix, than to mention it as being a problem.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
Don't know why tho :-)
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
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...
Yeah but you get the idea I want a Tablet PC.
Sorry for posting in caps but as i read the comments it struck me as wierd that NOBODY even mentioned white LED's. Is there some problems with them (different voltage/consumption) or do the CCD sensors ignore white light? Is their brightness somehow impaired (i doubt it, but it doesent hurt to ask). Any insghts would be helpful and greatly appreciated as i have a whole ton of white ones (and frankly i wanna be original...somehow 300++ blue led's in my computer are starting to bore me!
Live for the present, learn from the past, and dream of the future!
Back when opening up CueCats and modifying them to output unencrypted data was all the rage, I experimented with putting a white LED in one. Hell, it was free so if it didn't work afterwards, I wouldn't have cared. But sure enough, it still worked... Not only did it look cooler, but I found out it also gave it the unique ability of being able to scan RED barcodes, something laser-based and normal CueCats couldn't do.
Picture of White-modifed CueCat
I've also modified my share of mice, but I don't think they're as cool as my cat.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
OK, true, these modern optical mice don't use simple phototransistors but my guess is that they use devices based on semiconductors that behave like phototransistors.
Silicon phototransistors are most sensitive to near-infrared light. The closest visible frequency to this is red, which may explain why you see red LEDs a lot in photosensitive equipment.
That in mind, you may "see" (ha ha) good results using an infrared LED.
I was just thinking that I should put a white LED in my apple pro mouse as well.. so how DO you take these things apart?
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Green - normal condition
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Yellow - abnormal, but not serious
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Red - trouble. You should be doing something to make this light go out.
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Blue, White - general purpose, no designated meaning. Use whenever colors above don't apply.
Heavy industrial equipment has followed these rules for half a century, as have IBM mainframes. Stick to this in rackmount gear. It makes it far easier to tell, with a quick look, what needs attention.IR leds give most output for the energy. I don't know if their CCD element is sensitive to IR thought. Many optical detectors are in fact much more sensitive to IR than visible light.