wireless intellimouse explorer...

ok, how do these work?

i have a faulty one, and so i took it apart to try to see whats wrong with it, but nothing seems to be obviously wrong...

basically the light on the bottom is really dim, and the mouse doesnt respond to movement (yet the buttons work), and then sometimes the light comes on properly lit up and it works, but then after a little while (like 10 seconds) it dies again...

inside around the casing is what i think has to be some kinda thing which detects when your hand is touching the mouse (basically a thermister type thing), is there something up with that perhaps? the connection between the circuity of the mouse and the outside casing is a bit sketchy, but i'm not sure what the material is - maybe try some tin foil tomorrow see what happens..

any ideas as to the fault, and dont say RMA cos its being done :)

mark

On mine the light is very bright, so it could be a power problem? a dry joint somewhere causing a voltage drop so the led isn't getting the correct voltage? Could also be the receiver, do u have means of testing the output from the receiver to see if it changes, with a multimeter or oscilloscope? Mine does have some sort of sensor to detect your hand, not sure what it is tho. Not sure it would be a thermistor tho as that could be affected by room temperature, although it could work an differential temperature rather than absolute, but that would have it own problems.... The outside material could serve several purposes, my guess it is the aeriel, but you say that the buttons work, so it is unlikely to be the transmitter. I reckon it is something to do with either the transmitter led or the receiver, as in the movement sensors, especially as you say the led is dim

ah, didnt think it might be the aerial! makes sense now, heh i feel stupid :)

anyhow the mouse is working ok now, has been working ok for the past 10mins... i sprayed some wd40 on the metal plates which come into contact with the batteries because i thought they looked a bit corroded and not so great... anyhow when the new mouse arrives i'll be able to see whats what.. i mean this mouse, (it may be because its wireless and i'm used to wired ones) the resolution of the mouse seems really poor, could just be lag, who knows i'm gonna plug my v4 intellimouse back in and go to bed :)

cheers

Mine as no noticable lag except when the batteries are low, but having corroded connections could cause a voltage drop meaning the mouse wouldn't get as much power, give them a scrape with a flat headed screwdriver or an emery board etc so that they are all nice and shiny. You have checked the batteries haven't you ;) :p

i shall find some emery paper tomorrow, ok well later on today seeing as its already sunday :P and yeh the batteries should be fine, they've been on charge all day (1600mah jobbies, but then i think they are only 1.2v or something lame.. might try to source some decent 1.5v duracells from somewhere cos again it could be that... the tab in the intellipoint software says the battery level is 'good', but still, i'm making progress i feel :)

nn