Introduction.

In general, it was like this: due to the current circumstances, I live with my wife, cat and computer in one small and cramped room.
All my work is related to computers, and I spend most of my free personal time at the computer. Everything would be fine, but my wife constantly pestered me that the sound of the keyboard irritates her greatly and the mouse also annoys me with its clicking.
I figured out the keyboard quickly, bought myself a silicone keyboard (Flexible KR-109B Black Full Sized Keyboard USB+PS/2), it’s good, 100% silent, but of course there is one minus - you have to very accurately position it with your fingers when pressing the keys. But things were really bad with the mouse. I went around to all the stores that had a large assortment of mice, clicked them all, but did not find a single silent mouse. I went online and searched and found nothing except one mouse that costs over 40 bucks and the manufacturer did not make it silent, but simply brought it closer to silent by inserting silicone gaskets.

Making the mouse silent.

I took 3 mice for testing.

1. Genius NetScroll+Plus 3btn Roll (not optical, with a ball).
2. Defender Optical Mouse 2330.
3. A4-Tech SWOP-3.

I took the first one for the so-called “first pancake”, the second one for the experiment, the third one for myself.
After examining the internal contents of all three mice, it became clear that all of these mice use exactly the same microswitches (sources of clatter). They look like this:

microswitch

They also have the same contacts, so you can collect a lot of unnecessary mice, make them silent, choose the best samples from them (microswitches) and simply solder them to your favorite mouse.

Carefully remove the microswitch cover - here we had to tinker a little, it will not come off simply and easily. I roughly cut off a piece of plastic from the latch with a sharp nail (only on one side of the microswitch, as that would be enough).

disassemble the microswitch

After I removed the black cap, I immediately found a “little nasty thing” that clicks so loudly. Here she is!!!

little nasty thing

The picture below shows how it works.

checking the microswitch

Pay attention to the place where the double arrows are, this “trick” works as a spring, and so, the greater the tension of this spring, the louder and more clearly the mouse operates; the less, the quieter it is, but naturally up to a certain point.
All we need (in this case to reduce the clattering noise) is to slightly bend this “hook”. By the way, it can be easily removed, which cannot be said about the opposite.
The picture below shows in red how it was, in black how it should be. Bend it a little bit, because... You can bend it so that it won’t work at all and you’ll have to bend it back.

bend the little nasty thing

After each “bending”, insert this plate into place and check. To check, it is not necessary to cover this case with a black lid, just slowly press on the place where the lever should be attached. Well, after everything seems to suit you, you need to check everything in real action. To do this, carefully assemble the mouse (do not glue the black cover with anything until you are sure that everything is working properly), connect it to the computer and off you go.

After such a rework, bugs may arise, for example, after the rework of "A4-Tech SWOP-3", the left button, when pressed once, worked as two clicks. The “Defender Optical Mouse 2330” turned out best for me (except for the button under the wheel, because it was difficult and inconvenient to get there), it also has a quiet wheel movement and a quiet button movement than the “A4-Tech SWOP-3” ". It also happened that after making the mouse silent, it worked for 2-3 hours, and then it started clicking again, very quietly, but even at night when everyone is sleeping you can hear it. Therefore, I warn you right away, test it on “left” unnecessary mice and as soon as you achieve a positive result, then simply solder successful examples of microswitches into a normal mouse, but before that, make sure that your “normal mouse” has exactly the same microswitches, because After all the experiments, I opened a couple of mice from Compaq and there were completely different microswitches.

Today we decided to talk about what we always have at hand, without which a modern computer is unthinkable - we’ll talk about mice. There are an insane number of models on the market, including wireless options, but to one degree or another they are quite standard, the most that can be original about them is a slightly illuminated wheel...

Mouse modders have much more luck - their wheel glows with bright blue or green light, and the body glows with all the colors of the rainbow. It’s not so difficult to do all this yourself, and the effect will simply amaze you - especially at night!

So, let's begin our experiment on a computer mouse. The guinea pig will be a modest supermodel A4Tech SWOP-35PU.

A ray of light in a dark kingdom

It's quite easy to make something original out of a simple mouse. For our cute mod you will need a mouse, a soldering iron, solder, a few 3 mm of unpackaged LEDs (color and brightness of your choice), resistors to LEDs for connecting to 5 B, wires, heat shrink tubing (or insulating tubes) and glue.

In our case, we took three LEDs - a pair of blue ones (brightness 2,5 candelas) and one white (brightness 5 candel). In addition, we found ultra-thin stranded wires and transparent heat shrink. It is worthwhile to bite off half the length of the legs of the resistors in advance and find thin wires (for example, pull them out LPT-cable). If you don’t have packaged LEDs at hand, you can get by with ordinary ones, you just have to cut them down to the minimum size with a file. This needs to be done for one simple reason: there is very little space in the mouse body and you have to save it. Due to the same compactness, soldering must be done very carefully.

A4Tech SWOP-35PU is the hero of our novel.

After all the preparations, disconnect the mouse from the computer. First, remove the Teflon pads, if any, and unscrew all the screws. Next, you need to lift the mouse cover and carefully separate it from the main part. Be careful, as the plastic latches that additionally secure the mouse are fragile and easy to break.

After a successful operation, we see the printed circuit board, the attached LED and the sensor. Fits the board 5 -contact connector: two black, red, white and green wires. Now we cut the red and one of the black wires to choose from. At the same time, we solder our wires, and to them - resistors and LEDs. The plus goes to the red wire and the minus goes to the black wire. Don’t forget to put cambrics on them; they also need to be put on the legs of the LEDs. To connect resistors and LEDs, wires of length 3 -5 cm.

When everything is soldered, take the glue in your hands, drop a small drop onto the board and press the legs to it, having first bent them (just don’t glue your fingers to the printed circuit board). The glue will dry after 5 -7 seconds

Now is the time to connect the connector back to the board, and the USB cable of the mouse into the corresponding connector on the computer and check if everything works.

If everything is done correctly, the connected LEDs should light up. After this, you can assemble the mouse, but don’t rush to do it - our mod is not finished yet!

Mouse nose with light

Our mouse experiment didn't end there. Now we will work on its nose - the scroll wheel. We will need a piece of plexiglass no thinner than the width of the wheel (we took a large piece of thick, four-centimeter plexiglass and sawed off the necessary part). In addition, we will need a Dremel, cutting and grinding wheels for it, files and drills.

And again we disassemble the mouse and separate the plastic part on which the wheel is attached. There is a small spring under it, which you should not lose - it is responsible for the elasticity of pressure.

Remove the rubber wheel from the plastic support. Now let’s take it and trace an approximate outline on the plexiglass - we need to trace it with a small margin.

Using a cutting wheel and a Dremel, we cut out a piece of glass along the contour, after which we take the grinding attachment and round the corners of the workpiece. Now we drill a hole in the center of the future wheel.

We take a Dremel attachment with an elastic band for attaching the sandpaper and put our workpiece on it. The main thing is not to drill a hole larger than that of the nozzle itself. If you don’t have an attachment, then take a thick, blunt drill and wrap electrical tape around it to the required volume to secure the wheel blank.

We insert the resulting attachment into the Dremel, put a file and begin grinding the future wheel at medium speed. After this we got a perfectly round ring. Don't forget to give it a convex shape, otherwise it will be awkward to use. Using a sanding attachment, we bring the inner hole to the desired size.

Now all that remains is to assemble our scroll wheel. If the new ring does not fit, you need to sharpen it. It is important that the new ring does not touch the inside of the mouse, so if necessary, simply grind it down further. After fitting and all the torment, we finally assemble our wheel and install it in the mouse.

There is no need to backlight; we dealt with this issue at the beginning of the article - you just need to unfold the LEDs onto the wheel and put everything back together.

We connect the long-suffering manipulator to the computer and admire our work. This time that's all, but there's always more you can do, which means mouse modding doesn't stop there. We wish you successful mods and original ideas!

We would like to thank the site for its assistance in preparing this article. www.allcmg.net

You constantly use a computer mouse (or, to put it “pretentiously”, a mechanical manipulator that converts movement into a control signal), but have you ever thought about what you can do with a computer mouse? It turns out not so little. Select an object or copy it, move or delete, open or close a file or folder, everything and much more can be done with the computer mouse. That's what we'll talk about.
In this lesson we will get acquainted with the computer mouse, learn some of its secrets, and also learn what you can do with the mouse in the browser. You, using the mouse, can select a folder, file or some program and perform some actions, move in the desktop area, open a folder or run a program. You can copy or delete a word or entire text.
Computer mice come in ball, laser, wired and non-wired types. But the principle of operation is the same for everyone. When you move the mouse across the surface of your table, the cursor moves on the monitor screen, duplicating your actions. There are only three main buttons needed to work with a computer mouse. These are the left and right keys and the scroll wheel (scroll). Using a computer mouse and additional keyboard buttons, you can significantly simplify and facilitate many operations on the desktop, when working in programs and in browsers. Let's get acquainted with some tricks of working with the mouse.

The simplest operation that you have probably already had to perform is to select some text. To do this, simply add a vertical slash at the beginning of the text. It is also called in English - pipe(in Russian you can safely pronounce "pipe") To do this, use the left mouse button to click at the beginning of the text and hold down the left mouse button and drag (without releasing the button) to the place where the desired text ends. What to do if the length of the text exceeds the page size? The following combination will help you here. Place the cursor at the beginning of the text, hold down a key on the keyboard, Shift and click the left mouse button, without releasing the key on the keyboard, go to the end of the desired text and press the left key again. All text is selected, you can perform further actions with it.

Copy and paste the text.

You need to transfer part or all of the text to another location or folder. We already know how to highlight text. Now, on the selected text, right-click and in the contextual (drop-down) menu find “copy” and click on this item. All the necessary information is saved in your clipboard (the clipboard, if you don’t go into details, is temporary storage where the files, folders, and text you copied are stored). Now find the place where you need to paste what you copied, right-click on it and select “paste” from the drop-down menu. These operations can be done in another way. Select what you need, then hold down the keyboard keys CTRL+C. Everything has been copied. Select the place where you want to paste what you copied, put a slash (one click with the left mouse button) in the desired place and press CTRL + C. That’s it - the text is pasted.

Let's change the scale.

Sometimes, when you open a website or page, you see that the font is very small. Not everyone, especially older people, has good eyesight and it is difficult for them to read such a font. It turns out that this can be fixed quite simply. To do this, hold down the CTRL key and scroll the mouse wheel forward or backward. The font size will increase or decrease accordingly.

Open link in new tab.

You've already had to work on a page and move to another page or tab without closing the first one. At the same time, you performed the following action: “Right-click on the link and in the menu that opens, select - Open page in a new window.” But this whole process can be simplified. Hold down the CTRL key and click on the link. That's it, the link will open in a new window.

Move using the right mouse button.

You already know how to move a folder or shortcut on the desktop. If you don't know, I'll tell you. Hold down the selected object with the left mouse button and, without releasing, move it to the selected location. But it turns out that this operation can be performed using the right button. The principle is the same. Right-click and drag to the desired location. When you release the key, a menu will open where you will be asked about your next actions. Choose what you need.

Select a word or text.

If you need to highlight a word, then just move the mouse cursor over the desired word and double-click the left key. Is it possible to select the desired paragraph in this way? Certainly. Place the cursor at the beginning of the text again and left-click three times. The required paragraph is highlighted, you can perform further actions with it.

Third button.

Most users don't use the third mouse button. Few people know about its capabilities. But nevertheless, she can do something. For example, when you open a browser page and click on the wheel, the cursor will change its appearance to round. Now you can, by moving the cursor in different directions, the movement of the page on the screen will also scroll in all directions, and the further the scroll pointer moves, the faster the page will scroll. Sometimes very convenient when scrolling pages with large text.

These are the little tricks of a computer mouse. We'll stop there. Of course, the topic is much broader than stated, but throughout all subsequent lessons, we will return to this issue.

In the next lesson we will introduce the concept of keyboard shortcuts. These are combinations of two or more keys that can be pressed to perform tasks that typically require the use of a mouse or other pointing device. Keyboard shortcuts make using your computer easier, saving you time and effort when working with Windows and other programs...

In the meantime, I say goodbye to you. As always, you have questions, reviews and of course comments. If you have not yet subscribed to my news, then welcome!

Have you ever wondered how things work, what path they take from idea to implementation, how simple simple things are? How easy is it to make a comb? What about a computer mouse? What about a wooden computer mouse made from a single block of mahogany with an LCD screen, with its own electronic filling and a cable made and braided especially for it? I think you will be interested in my journey, which I went through during the 2.5 years of creating my mouse.

Design, construction, modeling

Since I was a complete zero in design, I approached the matter as a complete layman. I bought plasticine and started sculpting the mouse of my dreams.

First, I built a mouse that is ideal for me to use on a desktop. She is large and dark gray in the photo. Then I made a mouse that would suit me as a mobile mouse (small dark gray). And then I took the piece of plasticine I had stolen from the children to work, and my colleagues sculpted a mouse that claimed to be the “folk mouse.” It fit perfectly into the hands of the majority of the male population of our team (multi-colored in the photo). And what? The result is banal and dull forms that we twitch with our hands in every possible way day and night. Apparently, among the three standard mice, any user will find a comfortable one. The triumph of the ideal?

As a result, a mouse was modeled behind the computer, which, from my point of view, pretended to be elegant and beautiful.

At that moment I really liked her. And without thinking twice, I divided the computer model into parts. Elements of fastening and interfacing with electronic filling were thought out. It sounds simple, but in reality hundreds of hours of painstaking work were spent.

After this, the resulting parts were grown on a 3D machine to test assembly.

Material - polyamide. It fits well in the hand, like a glove. All parts fit together, technological assembly also went without problems

The next stage is milling in wood. I probably purchased a dozen different species of mahogany trees, but I started with the sapele tree, the rest of the species are waiting in the wings.

I didn't like the design in real life. The vertical gaps between the buttons and the case looked bad and untidy. Technological “sores” when working with wood are visible - chipping and removal of wood. Well, and most importantly, the keys did not bend, there was no click.

I thought about the design for a long time. Something was confusing, and there was no feeling of satisfaction. Then I realized that the mouse lacks solidity. I decided to return to the original version of the mouse, which I sculpted at the very beginning, only at a professional level and using sculptural plasticine. There are two design options in one mouse. Convenient for comparison and decision making.

After receiving the final version, 3D scanning was done and the surfaces were transferred to SolidWorks.

The second model turned out not much more successful than the first. The buttons were not being pressed and there was no way to fix this in the current model. The model's marriage was laid down at the DNA level. We need a more comprehensive approach with simultaneous control of both design and technology. Otherwise nothing will work. There will be either technological excellence or good design, but not all at once. These characteristics sit on opposite sides of the seesaw. So I throw everything in the trash and start over. Sketch-design-sculpting-testing-growing and so on, but with technological control of critical parameters on the one hand, and design on the other. We are looking for a middle ground.

The third model was made within the framework of the classic product design cycle. I started with a sketch.

Contours are drawn.

And finally, the approved design.

Plasticine model.

3D scanner, surface acquisition.

Computer model.

Then the process of finishing the body began. The body was cut out on a CNC machine, tested, modified, and then cut out again. As a result, only the tenth version of the case turned out to be functional. The biggest problem was making the keys comfortable to press. As a result, in some places the thickness of the wood decreased to 0.7 mm! It took me a year to refine the body.

The wheel and connector were also made of wood.

I laser engraved the wheel with the Clickwood brand.

The eleventh version of the case is coming, to which I will make minor changes. I also started developing a wireless version of the mouse. The wireless module is based on Bluetooth technology, the optosensor is laser. AAA size batteries, 2 pieces, replaceable. When recharging, the mouse will continue to work. All the elements are arranged very tightly, and I had to rack my brains quite a bit when assembling them. A cavity specially cut into the wooden body of the mouse serves as a container for batteries.

Wooden parts

Working with wood begins with the selection of wood. The boards must have the correct geometry, have a minimum of knots and defects, and have the required moisture content.

First, the boards are dried at home. At least six months.

After this, the board is sawn into small bars, which are dried for several weeks at the site of their further processing. At all stages, humidity is controlled by a special device. If the drying process is neglected, the wood loses geometric stability, and the manufacture and operation of the mouse becomes impossible.

The prepared bars are processed on a CNC machine using a specially created program.

From the very beginning of creating a part until the final assembly of the mouse, the parts are rigidly fixed to metal equipment so that at no stage does the part change its shape and geometric dimensions.

The processing of the upper part of the mouse has to be done with pinpoint precision, since its profile is designed for a soft click and is very thin in some places. I control the pressing force with a grammeter. In normal mice it ranges from 50 to 75 GS. I'm trying to achieve 50 GS.

Wood is the biggest challenge in my project. Not only is this the most significant part of the cost, but the percentage of defects here is very high. Wood is an anisotropic material. It may fail, there may be defects, chips may occur, and simply an error in the finishing technology can lead to the mouse body being thrown into the trash. I admit that I am still improving the processing technology, and I am not completely sure that I have found the right one. For statistics: in the first batch of ten cases, only three reached the finished product. Therefore, the part of the technological chain related to wood is critically important for the cost and quality of the finished product. It is constantly being worked on.

In the future I plan to work with bone. In particular, I am already creating a wheel from bone.

Electronic part

I developed the first mouse design myself. The sensor was a top-end optical sensor ADNS-3090 from Avago, the brains were an Atmel controller, and the rest were components from brand companies like Murata, Yageo, Geyer, Omron and Molex.

I paid special attention to the high-quality nutrition of the mouse, here, in my opinion, I reached the absolute level with my perfectionism

The first working breadboard.

In black version, final.

There were also experiments with different buttons. I always tried to choose a quiet mouse among others. Well, since I’m making it myself, I decided to conduct an experiment and make such a mouse and try it out. To do this, I replaced the clicking left and right “micrics” with soft and quiet ones used for the central button (have you noticed that the central button always clicks quieter?). A special version of the board was created, on which all three identical “micrics” were mounted.

I selected and bought a batch of gold-plated connectors for the mouse. As usual, in China. I don’t know about “better contact”, but they harmonize perfectly with the wood.

Screen, firmware

Fascinated by the idea of ​​​​placing a display in a mouse, I began searching for it among hundreds of suppliers. The requirements were simple: strict dimensional restrictions and the ability to at least symbolically display at least eight familiar places. While I was selecting it, I learned almost everything about displays. They differ by type: symbolic and graphic, by technology: TAB, COG, TFT, OLED, LCD, E-Paper and others. Each type or technology has a lot of varieties, sizes, colors, lighting, etc. In general, there was a lot to dig into.

After surfing half the internet, I found out that the size I needed was made by only one company in the whole wide world. All other options are definitely larger in size. And even the display I found barely fit inside the mouse. As an option, a custom display was considered, which could be made for me according to my requirements, but this is a very expensive option for me (about one hundred thousand rubles). For the first model, a graphic display with a resolution of 128 by 64 pixels is quite suitable, which is what I chose.

In order to figure out how the display actually looks and fits with my mouse, I had to order all varieties of this display from the manufacturers. What do these varieties mean? The model name consists of unpronounceable alphanumeric combinations like FP12P629AU12. All of them are assembled from various blocks and are clearly deciphered in the specification. For example, the example given can be assembled from blocks FP.12.P.629A.U12, where the type, size, voltage, controller, operating temperature range and other information about the model are encrypted. And the last block is the trickiest. It can have several dozen values, each of which means one or another combination of such characteristics as the presence and color of the backlight, background color, symbol color, and the range of degrees from which information can be clearly read. These are the parameters that were interesting to me.

As a result, “for testing” I ordered 18 different modifications. The manufacturer agreed, but said that the minimum order was 5 displays for each modification. There was nowhere to go, and I had to agree, knowing that 90% would go into the trash can. And then, one cloudy day, the express delivery service brought me home a huge box in which a homeless person of average build could live. The box contained 18 smaller boxes, each of which comfortably accommodated 5 displays, securely secured for a long trip to cold Russia. There was so much accompanying packaging that it was enough for my mother-in-law to cover several beds for the winter.

As a result, after thorough tests on a specially assembled stand, two displays turned out to be suitable for the series. They differ only in background: gray and yellow-green. These are the ones I will offer to complete the mouse. By default I plan to set it to yellow-green, but two more options will be available: a display with a gray background and a mouse without a display at all.

But the main intrigue was what information can be shown on the screen? I was offered different ideas: ambient temperature, indication of the arrival of letters, something else that was not very original.

My train of thought followed a different path. Let's start with the fact that there are two significant restrictions on displaying operational information: the presence in front of the user of a huge and high-quality source of any information (monitor) and the need to turn the mouse over to obtain information. In addition, the screen is small, the resolution is low, and the LED interferes with normal reading. Therefore, I came to only one conclusion: the information should be of an entertaining nature only, the practical value of which tends to zero, but at the same time the WOW! effect should be killer.

What kind of information can have such properties in a device of mediocre complexity? There is not much of it: mileage, time of use, speed of movement, number of clicks and scrolling of the wheel. I decided to abandon the last parameter, since it seemed uninteresting to me. All other parameters are tied to the session (the last time the mouse was used from the moment power was supplied to it, i.e. connecting to the computer or turning on the computer itself) and to the entire lifetime of the mouse. For example, the user can find out at any moment how many times he pressed the left mouse button or how many meters his mouse has traveled in meters today or since the time of its purchase. The information is absolutely useless, but it will help those who are especially curious to understand how much he torments the mouse. If other interesting ideas appear, they can be implemented with new firmware.

I also added general information about the mouse (model, mouse and firmware number, month of manufacture) and a settings screen. You can choose the language and system of measures (English or metric). To store all this information, we had to add permanent storage flash memory to the circuit.

To fit this amount of information, I had to break everything down into screens. Each screen displays one type of information and shows session and all-time parameter values. There are six screens in total, which can be changed using the mouse wheel.

The first option was implemented in a purely textual manner, for which several font options were even developed.

I made a firmware to evaluate how the text looks using the created font on the mouse screen. It looks terrible, what can I say.

Now it has become obvious that the screen needs graphics, and not a set of symbolic information. Therefore, I brought a designer into the work, and together we prepared three graphic options; in the end, the second option was recognized as the most successful.

Of course, this design required higher resolution, so it had to be adapted.

But that's not the end of the story. After I selected a screen for the mouse, I ordered a trial batch for breadboards. As a result, screens arrived, but for some reason the number of pins differed from what was indicated in the specification (datasheet). In response to the request, the manufacturer received an answer that everything was fine, this was a minor modification, and it would not affect the performance in any way. Meanwhile, the missing two wires were responsible for the brightness of the displayed graphics.

It was all very suspicious. And just like he was looking into the water. We remade the board for a modified screen, soldered it, and then it turned out that the screen was completely dim. It's as if the device's batteries are dead. And this became clear after a long and painstaking work of searching and selecting screens, purchasing a trial batch of all modifications and testing them. Time, money, and so on.

But the story turned out to have a good ending. After correspondence with the Chinese, it turned out that the screen can now adjust its contrast directly from the firmware. We repaired the firmware, and everything started to show just fine!

Everything is shown as planned: mileage, speed, number of clicks, etc.

Subsequently, the firmware also changed several times: a setting for changing the language appeared. Two languages ​​on one screen are bad - readability deteriorates, Cyrillic abracadabra will only irritate an English-speaking user, and support for other languages ​​may be needed in the future. The difficulties began when I tried to adjust the mouse travel. It seems that there is something complicated: the optical sensor transmits the increment in two coordinates, which must be converted to a system of measures and added modulo to the current value. That's the whole mileage.

But, as it turned out, not everything is so simple. Two people with mice with the same sensor installed can get radically different results! The thing is that the resolution of the sensor (sensitivity) very much depends on the surface on which the mouse is rolling. The best results are obtained when the mouse rolls on white paper. Slightly worse on wood and fabric. It's really bad for laminate and film. The declared sensitivity is achieved only on ideal, from the point of view of the sensor, surfaces.

This makes no difference to the end user. He connects the mouse and, through trial and error, sets the operating system to a comfortable cursor speed. The system remembers this coefficient and uses it to increase or decrease the movement coordinate increment values.

But it’s a completely different matter if you plan to read these parameters directly from the mouse. The mouse on one surface will show the result of running one meter, on the other - one and a half. Speed ​​will also lie. And something needs to be done about this.

To solve this problem, we had to introduce the “Sensitivity” parameter, which allows you to individually select the coefficient for each surface. By default it is equal to one, which corresponds to the surface of white paper. It can be increased or decreased in the settings. You don’t have to touch it at all, everything will work just fine as is. But for true perfectionists, the leaflet included with the mouse will contain a table from which you can select a coefficient for the existing surface and instructions on how you can independently configure the mouse to show the exact mileage.

During the development of the firmware, another side effect of the sensor was discovered. If you take the mouse and simply wave it in the air, the mileage readings will also change. This is due to the fact that the sensor detects the surrounding space as a certain surface and also tries to obtain mouse offset values. Therefore, you can observe the following effect: you turn the mouse over, look at the mileage parameters and are surprised that they change upward right before your eyes. Of course, you can install a tilt angle sensor in the mouse that turns off the sensor while it is turned over, but doing this only for the situation described is unreasonable. Perhaps it will appear in the next version, but not now. After all, the mouse is raised only to look at the indicators, and 99.9% of the time it is on the surface and receives the correct information.

Cable

I decided to make the cable as flexible as possible so that it would not interfere with the movement of the mouse and would be “invisible” for kinematics. Well, I personally don’t like the “spring” cable.

Sometimes it seems that when creating a product, the cable is the most insignificant part of the product. What's easier is to buy the required amount of cable in the store and unsolder it. No big deal. But, alas, not here in Russia. Sometimes it seems that our industry is no longer capable of making anything more complex than cast iron irons. Attempts to find a cable resulted in a three-week search and shaking up the assortment of absolutely all manufacturers of Russian cable products. It turned out that our standards do not describe a cable suitable for modern electronic devices. For example, a four-core microphone cable with a KMM 4x0.12 mm2 braid has an outer diameter of 5 mm. That's a lot. Older mice and keyboards have a seemingly thick cable that is only 3.5mm in outer diameter. The closest analogue on sale was a cable from the German company Lapp Kabel, but its outer diameter was just 3.5 mm. Now imagine the braid on such a cable. Introduced? I'll tell you that I saw a similar cable on power cords for irons

So, it turned out: you can’t buy such a cable in Russia. Dot. Well, we are not used to retreating. I go to production and try to order, fortunately they still make cables in Russia. And to do this, let’s define my requirements. So what do I need:
The cores are copper, made of braided wires (for flexibility).
Number of cores - 4.
Screen - yes.
Flexibility - maximum.
The outer diameter of the cable is strictly no more than 3 mm.
Color - Pantone 4625 C.
Bottom line: I tried to contact probably a dozen possible manufacturers of cable products; no one is interested in messing with my order. They didn’t even ask what mileage I needed. Bottom line: such a cable cannot be bought or produced in Russia. Sad. But we are not used to retreating.

I go to Alibaba.com. I find the first Chinese manufacturer I come across, write a letter and literally a few hours later I receive an answer: we will make any cable for you! I'm shocked. I send him the specification, money for delivery, and a week later I receive a sample. Wow! And I lost almost three months, trying to patriotically place an order in Russia. It turned out that the Chinese could easily make me a cable with an outer diameter of 2.5 mm.

As a result: I ordered 4 different samples from China. At first I was not satisfied with the scratchability and dullness of the outer shell, then I was not satisfied with the flexibility of the cable, then again I was not satisfied with the flexibility, and in the end I settled on the last sample sent, which I was ready to order. They couldn't be more flexible. The cable has memory. As a result, I accidentally received a cable with memory, although I wanted one that was as flexible as a rope

I ordered a kilometer, two weeks later I had the cable. Total time spent: six months.

Braided my kilometer of cable. There were two options.

Approximately 10% of the cable was rejected. This is the beginning of the bays, where the braid is unraveling and the machine has not yet entered operating mode. And some places where, for some reason, loops and knots of braiding threads formed.

If the end of the cable is not sealed with heat shrink, it will fluff up immediately, the threads are synthetic! Therefore, the installation of the cable assembly is complicated by the preventive attachment of heat shrink.

The outer diameter of the braided cable was 3.2 mm, i.e. The braid added 0.7 mm to the cable diameter. It doesn’t seem like much, but a regular mouse usually has a cable with a diameter of 3.5 mm, and in the era of wireless mice it seems thick and heavy. Recently, non-budget mice have begun to be equipped with cables with a diameter of 3 mm, and they no longer interfere so much during work; they are almost invisible. But the keyboard cable can have an outer diameter of 4 mm. And even more. But this doesn't matter for the keyboard.

Plastic parts

No matter how much I would like to make the body parts of the mouse entirely from wood, I cannot do without plastic. You need legs, an axle for the wheel, a support for the axle and a piece of glass for the display.

Therefore, I had to order a mold from the Chinese.

After each test casting, the Chinese sent me a dozen samples, which I tested on my mouse.

As a result, I modified the mold three times until the quality began to satisfy me. The problems were different. For example, after assembly I got a problem with dust that formed between the display and the protective glass. It looks untidy. Moreover, the mouse will scratch on the surface, and dust will gradually accumulate there. I had to convert the glass into a container with sides where the display would be placed, after which the contour would be sealed.

The result is something like this.

Refining a mold is not an easy task at all, and changes can only be made in the direction of making the part larger. Therefore, any inaccuracy or error can ruin the entire work. For reference: each revision means a month and a half of waiting for new samples. And the change itself could be microscopic, but necessary.

I won’t dwell on plastic parts; this technology is now leading, and I can’t tell you anything new or interesting here. I’ll just say about the legs, for which I spent a long time selecting a material with reduced friction, after which I conducted tests and “races” of mice in order to determine the winner with minimal friction.

Processing and coating

First, careful work is carried out with the removal of lint, sanding and polishing of the surface.

I had a difficult task ahead of me. It was necessary to stabilize the wood so that the geometry of the mouse did not change depending on humidity, and to protect the wood from working in an aggressive environment (sweat and grease from the hand).

From the very beginning I refused varnish. Varnish is a surface film that eventually cracks and breaks down, leaving the wood bare. Sweat and fat penetrate the pores, the wood darkens, and the irreversible process of its degradation begins. Therefore, it was decided to use oil as impregnation and protection, and wax to give a commercial look.

To make it clear: the tree is completely saturated with pores, which contain either air or the oil of the tree itself (if the tree is a rubber tree). Our task is to fill the pores as much as possible with our oil, which should then polymerize and protect the wood.

In order not to prolong the story, I will say that I tried a lot of oils: linseed, teak, tung, Vaseline, Danish. Each oil has its own character. For example, wax is very difficult to apply to teak oil, while linseed oil takes a very long time to polymerize. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce a catalyst into it - a drier.

I ended up developing two technologies. The first is the technology of vacuum impregnation of wood. It works like this: I create a vacuum in an environment with oil and wood. Air begins to escape from the pores. After removing the vacuum, the pores are filled with oil. As a plus, the tree is well stabilized. The downside is that it gets very dark. Looks good, but not for everyone.

The second technology is surface coating with oil. The oil is applied 1-2 or more times with a non-woven cloth.

Apply carnauba wax.

And rub with a muslin circle.

Then, using a hair dryer, I “dissolve” the dry wax residues in narrow and difficult places. In the case of “insoluble” debris, I pick up a toothbrush with stiff bristles, remove the debris, and then repeat the waxing procedure locally again.

If we evaluate the labor costs of processing, then manual labor for one mouse is about four hours.

Assembly

Next comes the installation operation, but before it you still need to remove traces of processing from the technological holes. Then, using a special 3M tape, I adjust and glue the legs (the body can move by a fraction of a millimeter, and this will be immediately noticeable: it will wobble like a lame stool). Then I lay the cable, mount the board, support, install the wheel and also, if necessary, adjust the buttons (there should be no chatter) and pressing force. This operation can also take up to four hours.

If you want to please your pet with a toy, but you haven’t found anything new on store shelves for a long time, don’t be upset - there is a way out!

Learn how to make a mouse out of thread with your own hands for a cat, using a minimum of time and money.

In order to make a volumetric mouse from threads, we will need the following materials:

1. Foil;
2. Scissors;
3. Glue Moment;
4. Wool threads;
5. Varnish (black and pink).

So let's get started:

1. Take food foil and cut a piece at least 20 cm wide with scissors.

2. Squeeze the foil, gradually forming a shape.

3. We make sure that the surface of the figure is as smooth as possible, without leaving any voids inside.

4. Now we will need to make mouse ears from the loops. To do this, take a woolen thread and form a small ring.

6. We repeat the procedure and form the same loop side by side. We got these little ears.

7. Take the loops and carefully apply quick-drying glue to them in a thin layer.

8. Place the ears closer to the nose and wrap the mouse (to do this, you also need to apply glue to the sides of the foil figure). We cut off the excess threads.

9. Now apply a little glue completely to the entire foil. You can start either from the body or from the nose (in this case we choose the first option). Take a woolen thread and carefully wrap it around the mouse.

10. We wrap the nose in the same way.

11. We have done the main part. Now we wait until the glue dries and the threads are well fixed.

13. If the ponytail seems too long, you can trim it a little.

14. To complete, we need to make a muzzle for the mouse. We take black varnish and make the eyes with droplets, and the pink nose of the mouse. After the first layer of varnish has dried, it is advisable to apply a second layer (also in droplets). This way we will add a little volume to the eyes and nose.

Now, our mouse is ready to go on an exciting journey with a playful fluffy!