Thursday, June 5, 2014

Rearming KitKat with a frickin' laser (and USB)

The kids returned from a Children's day festival with a bag of more or less worthless trinkets, among them a lovely KitKat promotional ball mouse. Its fatal handicap is the connector - the last time I had a PS/2 in my machine was a decade ago ...
I contemplated building a PS/2-USB interface with an Arduino, but lacked the 3.6V Zeners used in the circuit I found on the intertubes.

Fortunately there was an old USB laser optical mouse lying in my drawer.
I decided to transplant its innards to KitKat.
The scroll-wheel is broken, but since KitKat doesn't have one it's not a problem :-)

The PCB was too large to fit into the enclosure and the switches needed to be repositioned.
Cut, resolder, rewire, fasten with hot glue,

et voilĂ  - a USB KitKat laser mouse!














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