Optical mouse questions

I'd guess that the detector lens is scratched, fogged, or blocked by a cat hair. A single, high intensity (from the detector's point of view) linear object in the field of view is probably enough to "lock" the logic in place.

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Rich Webb   Norfolk, VA

Anything stuck to the mouse itself would be out of focus so not sure if it would care.

But do check the obvious - dirt on the lens, etc.

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I've had a few that the cable coming from the mouse to the computer went defective. The defect was most always at where it leaves the mouse casing. Splicing out the defective part fixed it. This does not mean that what I am describing is the fault in your case. There are any one of a number of parts in the mouse that can go bad, and stop it from responding.

--

JANA
_____


"Bart Bervoets"  wrote in message 
news:42ebfb4f$0$14124$ba620e4c@news.skynet.be...
Not that it matters with current pricing, but i was wondering what
usually fails in an optical mouse.
I have a few that light up when moved but don't work at all.
Suggestions?

Bart Bervoets

It sounds like the cable is bad. It will still light up as long as power and ground are good, but if either of the USB data lines are broken it won't move at all. The fact that it lights up when moved means the optical sensor is working. I've never seen a mouse control chip fail. The cable usually breaks right where it enters the mouse body.

As a side note, I was recently playing with an old optical mouse that uses one of the common Agilent optical sensors. The mouse sensor just outputs two quadrature signals which go to a separate USB control chip. The data sheets are available on Agilent's web site.

One thing I noticed when I switched to an optical mouse was that any quick movements caused the mouse to lose track and jump around. I had to change my mousing technique a little to avoid this. I decided to try replacing the 18MHz clock crystal with faster ones to see if it would track better at higher speeds. Surprisingly it worked fine as high as 50MHz. Even 66MHz worked most of the time. At 50MHz it's basically impossible to move the mouse fast enough to lose track. Andy Cuffe

snipped-for-privacy@psu.edu

All cables and power cords do that. Unless you run a truck over them, they never fail in the middle.

N

Only thing I've ever had fail is the cable, tends to get broken wires right near the mouse.

Well, it was the cable, at least in the mouse i just opened. I found one of the wires to be faulty, so i cut 10cm away and resoldered the wire to the pcb. Works like a charm Shows you that we throw away too much.

Bart Bervoets

The only optical mouse I've used that had tracking issues was the bottom-end Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse. Every once in awhile, the cursor would jump to the top-left of the window. I've never had problems with other mice.

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Software driver, not hardware problem.

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I had several of those bottom end MS mice and I also noticed that problem. It wasn't a driver issue; even using the default windows driver didn't fix the problem. The same driver works fine with other optical mice. It did it in USB, or PS/2 mode and even on a mac. I think there was a bug in the micro controller's firmware. It acted like it reset itself every so often.

The effect I was talking about is totally unrelated to this. If you move any optical mouse faster than a certain rate, the optical sensor can't track the motion and the pointer just jumps around randomly. These mice work by taking a series of digital pictures of the desk. It then compares the pictures to determine the speed and direction. If the mouse moves too far between frames there will be nothing in common between the two frames so it won't be able to figure out what's happening. Older optical mice were only rated for about 14" per second which is easy to exceed occasionally, or when playing games. I think they've improved things with recent mice and 'gamer' mice. Andy Cuffe

snipped-for-privacy@psu.edu

True, one would think so (although personally I'd like a bit more depth of field) but believe me, personal experience has demonstrated that a strategically placed cat hair can really bollix-up an optical mouse.

--
Rich Webb   Norfolk, VA

On Sat, 30 Jul 2005 23:18:54 +0200, Bart Bervoets put finger to keyboard and composed:

I've had to replace a microswitch and worn feet on my (15 years?) old Mouse Systems serial optical mouse. I've also replaced the worn metal mouse pad. The original cable is still going strong, though.

- Franc Zabkar

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Changing mice fixes/causes the problem. NO change in the software. If it is a software issue, it's MS's, although I think I had the same issue on a computer with Logitech drivers installed, too.

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I've got an occasional problem like this: The cursor suddenly moves quickly in some direction with a mind of its own. Is this a known problem? Is there a known solution?

-

----------------------------------------------- Jim Adney snipped-for-privacy@vwtype3.org Madison, WI 53711 USA

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A couple other people said they confirmed this to be the mouse itself but perhaps there is a driver update to ignore bogus values sent?

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I also have one that once in a while decides to go on a walkabout. It might go to a corner to come out fighting, or it might just stroll across the screen with no type of input from me. I've never become annoyed enough to try to track it down, though.

WT

My Microsoft Intellimouse has a flaky scroll-roller switch. Sometimes freaks out all on it's own. Have to press the scroll roller-switch once or twice to get it to stop.

Mark Z.

Howdy!

My major find? Bad cables blowing the data stream back and forth.

RwP