Hacking a Mouse Optical vs Mechanical Pros & Cons

[Regis Maltais]

:-/

Hi,

I have tried last weekent to hack an optical mouse for my 3 inch trackball...

I have dismantle it and kept the electronics and the mouse lens.

I have cut a piece of 3/4 inch wood to put at the bottom of my trackball insteal of the regular metal plate and I have used a router to groove a hole to fit the mouse electronics.

I have remove the lamp that usually light my translucent blue ball.  

The mouse optics was aligned to be in the center of my trackball (usually where the lamp light the ball) I have put some springs to adjust the gap between the mouse optics and the trackball...

After messing few hours, I gave up!

I taught that it was easy!!! it's not...

There is a gap issue and an angle issue to make this thing work... I think if someone play hard will be able to
mess up the fragile alignment of the mouse optics.

So I dismantle a intellipoint wheel mouse and hack it to
replace the trackball optics... it's more reliable.

To ease the mouse hacking I have put the IR Led and IR transistor on a IC socket (usually theses sockets are made to prevent to solder directly on a chip, instead the soldering is made on the socket)... the gap between the IR Led and IR transistor is just enough and the alignment of the IR LED and IR transistor  is a piece of cake!

that's all folks!

Reg