/ mods / bluetooth mouse

Bluetooth mouse mod: [update: 14-Jan-2006]

Introduction:

The Anycom BTM 100 Bluetooth Mouse I bought a couple of month ago was fulfilling my wireless-mouse-needs perfectly except that I wanted a mouse with more personality. Unless many wireless mouse, you can still use the mouse while it's charging, thanks to a clever charging dock system:


A few years ago I found an old mouse made in 1982 (only recently a friend was able to tell me it was a Sun Type 4 mouse):

As far as I know this is actually one of the first optical mouse ever made (1982!). The mouse was manufactured in Santa Clara, USA by a company called "Mouse Systems". The optical system was made of two pairs of led/photo-resistor. One pair was responsible for the detection of the vertical movements and the other for the vertical ones. Check out the patent for more information.
This clever system was unfortunately only working on a special striped mouse pad I didn't had. Moreover the mouse connector was a RJ11 one (used for phones) and had always prevented from testing the mouse.

Bellow is a picture showing the Sun keyboards and mice of the Type 3 and 4:

The BMT-100 is a slightly smaller mouse that the Type 4 so I made assumptions I wouldn't have too much trouble making the Anycom's electronic parts fit into the Sun Type 4's plastic case. I also thought buying a an old classic Apple mouse but I choose the Sun Type 4 for the following reasons:
• It has three buttons (two for the left and right click and one for the wheel click).
• It is a bit bigger than the Apple classic mouse so batteries AND the charging control electronic would also fit in the case.
• I already had the Sun one!

Ingredients:

  • One Anycom BTM 100 mouse.
  • One Sun Type 4 mouse.
  • One usb cable.
  • One female RJ11 connector.
  • A drilling machine (with adjustable speed) and various drills.
  • A Victorinox Swiss Army Knife.
  • A grip.
  • A soldering iron.
  • Mastic that behaves/glues well on plastic.
  • A wood scissor and a heat source (to melt/cut the plastic).
  • Patience (2 days of work ahead)!

The next two pictures show my work place and the orginal electronic board of the Sun Type 4 mouse:


Unfortunately I had no digital camera at the time I made the mods, hence you will only see pictures of the finished mouse.

Mouse controls placement:

Placing the mouse mainboard into the Sun case was suprisingly easy: I just had to cut an angle of the board then it was in place. Then had to make the wheel fit in the case. I used a computer metallic case-part to hold the wheel in position. Finally I had a board on the top right corner of the case to place the left click button:

The picture bellow shows a detail of the new wiring added to the mainboard to position the click-switches, the power-switch and the wheel in the case:

This is pictures is another view of the click-switches and power switch:

I used an epoxy-based mastic model a shape that held the wheel in place:



Optical adjustments:

One of the hardest and longest tasks was the optical adjustment for the lens and sensor. The optical sensor can't work properly when it's out of focus (when it only 'sees' a blurry picture of surface where the mouse is operated). The problem was the Sun mouse case was slightly thicker than the Anycom one: I had to remove 2 millimeters (0.08") of plastic. The technique I used was to remove any mouse relief on the bottom of the mouse and to 'dig' the inside of the mouse with a hot wood scissor until the mouse cursor moved.




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Please notice on the last picture the two little mirrors. They used to reflect the light coming from the mouse pad to the light sensitive resistors on the board.
The following picture shows optical sensor on the left (note than the CMOS captor is directly exposed to dust there, please pay attention to the little hole in the optical chip) and the Bluetooth antenna in the middle:


Charging system:

The last step to make was to integrate the charging control electronic of the original charging-dock into the mouse body and to integrate a connector to be able to bring +5 volts from an USB connector to charge the batteries when necessary.

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I was first planning to use a small female USB2 connector (ie. the ones used on digital cameras) to be able to charge the mouse almost anywhere even if I had no cable with me but the problem was I had no such connector. Moreover, I was working on this project for almost two days and it was Saturday night: I wouldn't be unable to buy a small USB2 female connector before Monday...
I finally dismantled a telephone extension cable connector (the quite big French ones) and took out a female RJ11 connector. Enventually, I cut another hole in the plastic case and fixed it with the epoxy mastic:

Conclusion:

After about 30 hours of work, the mouse mod was finally achieved and amazingly, it's functinning flawlessly. I mainly use this mouse as a Keynote/PowerPoint remote control to command the slide transition and it's always a pleasure to hold such a device in my hand! (This mouse has the same age as me!) The following picture shows the mouse while it's batteries are charging:


Bellow is the complete mouse package shown (the Bluetooth optical mouse, it's velvet transporting bag and the USB charging cable):


Links:

- Electro-optical mouse , United States Patent 4364035.

- The Old Suns Picture Archive.

- Anycom BTM-100 Bluetooth Mouse.

- Toutcoller : Pattex ReparExpress Pate a reparer multi-materiaux
This page presents the mastic I used to repair the wrong hole I made in the Airport plastic case (it's in French).

- Old-computers.com.

- MacBidouille.com - Apple related news and DIY articles. Daily updated.

- Mac mod - Site dedicated to Apple computer mods.


 

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