Wired Magic Mouse?

abhibeckert

05 Feb 2014, 02:10

I've currently got Apple's "magic" mouse (http://www.apple.com/au/magicmouse/ ) and it works great... but it's wireless.

I have good rechargeable batteries and a good charger but it still means every now and then the mouse dies. Sometimes the batteries last two days, sometimes they last two weeks (I haven't worked out why...). It's stupid.

The multitouch surface is miles better than a wheel, I can scroll a single pixel at a time slowly or flick through several pages at a time. It also supports horizontal scrolling in addition to vertical, and OS X has been setup to require a good horizontally scrolling mouse.

Finally, the multi-touch surface is good enough to accurately detect the position of four finger tips in real-time — there are various gestures built in and third party software can add a ton more... which is very handy.

Does anybody know of a good touch-surface mouse with a proper USB cable?

Or... perhaps someone with more mod-fu than me has some advice how to replace the batteries with USB power? Leave it using bluetooth, but have a USB cable providing 3V to the battery contacts. I suspect the hardest part would be routing the wire out the front... I've got a dead magic mouse (got rained on) that I could disassemble as a prototype.

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Muirium
µ

05 Feb 2014, 09:15

Aha! Finally someone else around here who loves that most magical mouse. I never even liked scrollwheels before I got mine, back when they came out. Lightyears ahead of all that.

Get one of these:
Image
http://www.mobeetechnology.com/the-magic-charger.html

It pops in where the batteries go. Makes the Magic Mouse recharge wirelessly when on its little base. And is noticeably lighter overall than a stock model. Absolute bloody marvel I tell you. My mouse is now eternal, I haven't popped it open in years.

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robo

07 Mar 2014, 00:16

If your issue is battery life, you could probably turn it into a wired mouse using USB for power only... USB provides 5V, and the mouse runs on 3V (2 x 1.5V AA batteries). So you'd just have to run a USB cable into the mouse, ignore the data wires, and convert the 5V power to 3V (maybe something like this: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/526 ).

It would look like a wired mouse, but the interface to the computer would still be bluetooth. It would just never need batteries changed :)

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