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Building the mouse Logitech won't make

samwilkinson.io

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Re: Building the mouse Logitech won't make

#201

Post by stavros »

stronglikedan wrote: post #174
bityard wrote: post #39

My favorite mouse is the Logitech Anywhere MX. It's highly comfortable despite being pretty small. The back/forward buttons on the side are indispensable for web browsing, file management, and switching weapons in first-person shooters. It takes two AA batteries which last for months and take seconds to swap out. The dongle is small and has good range. The scroll wheel switches between clicky and free-scrolling. It's…

Are you sure the microswitch thing is as widespread as you imply? Or could you have just got a bad unit? I have one at work and one at home, and have used them both daily for many more than a couple of years.

I had two mouses get that problem about a year in. One was the MX Master 3S, a 100 € mouse. For that price point, it's entirely unacceptable for the mouse to only last a year. Good thing it had a two year warranty, but it's such a hassle to be without a mouse for weeks.

Re: Building the mouse Logitech won't make

#202

Post by bluGill »

jimmies wrote: post #166
stn8188 wrote: post #2

"Balking at the $50+ charge for turnkey assembly, I opted to take the financially responsible route and pay $200+ for a hot-air rework station to solder it myself." Yeah, I feel this :)

Alternative way to see it: The author had either a $50 solution, or a $50 solution that comes with a discounted hotair rework station for $150… I learned it from Superfastmatt. He needed a piece of plastic that retails for $1500 for his van, so he said: “either I have a $1500 solution or I have a $1500 solution but I get a free fancy 3D printer in the end…” that stuck with me.

When doing any diy I assume I will spend more on tools the first time than I save, but the next time I have the tools and so costs are much less.

Re: Building the mouse Logitech won't make

#203

Post by stavros »

GeekyBear wrote: post #116
bityard wrote: post #39

My favorite mouse is the Logitech Anywhere MX. It's highly comfortable despite being pretty small. The back/forward buttons on the side are indispensable for web browsing, file management, and switching weapons in first-person shooters. It takes two AA batteries which last for months and take seconds to swap out. The dongle is small and has good range. The scroll wheel switches between clicky and free-scrolling. It's…

> 1) The the microswitches go bad after a couple years. I've got to mention how reliable the switches used to be. I purchased a wired Logitech mouse in the 90's that lasted through three different computers. More recent models fail quickly with such regularity that I just stopped purchasing the brand at all.

My G5 lasted for more than a decade, I think? It didn't even go bad, I bought a new mouse and used its switches to fix the (at that point one year old) Logitech trackball I had bought much later.

Re: Building the mouse Logitech won't make

#204

Post by sethhochberg »

devilbunny wrote: post #75
Liftyee wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about online mouse communities, but it intrigued me that you prefer replaceable AA batteries to built-in rechargeables. I realise now that because of my dislike (leaning towards hatred) of single-use alkaline batteries I unwittingly dismissed the benefits of having quick replaceability. Nickel metal rechargeables are a good AA/AAA substitute for devices designed to tolerate their lower voltage. For more powe…

I, too, prefer disposables, but for a somewhat different reason. One very commonly used surgical item is a sterile suction/irrigator. It's sealed with 8 AA's at the factory, used for 2-3 minutes during laparoscopic surgery, and disposed of. So pretty much anyone who works in a surgical suite that does laparoscopy has a personally unlimited supply of AA's that would be thrown away anyway .

Years ago when I worked in live audio we had a similar setup. Zero tolerance for a performer's mic pack dying mid show because a low battery indicator wasn't calibrated right or someone incorrectly tracked how many hours a particular set had been used, so it was fresh-from-the-package alkaline AAs installed before every set, and a virtually unlimited supply of half-charged disposables to take home afterwards. Plenty would get reused for internal equipment checks and sound checks, but there were still more than enough to go around.

At the time (well over a decade ago) there was still lots of skepticism around recharagables and the extra process involved in dealing with them... but the tech has gotten lots better since, at that time even low-self-discharge was sort of hard to find. I'm sure much of the industry has moved over by now.

Re: Building the mouse Logitech won't make

#205

Post by sch-sara »

demarq wrote: post #62
sch-sara wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what was causing the friction / how did you fix it?

There is a spring and some sort of latch You can see it off to the side in this post https://www.reddit.com/r/Trackballs/comments/u0f9kn/smooth_s... But know that it won't make the onscreen scroll smooth. Only the physical feel

thanks! Fingers crossed I don't break anything

Re: Building the mouse Logitech won't make

#206

Post by antoniuschan99 »

frankus wrote: post #27
stn8188 wrote: post #2

"Balking at the $50+ charge for turnkey assembly, I opted to take the financially responsible route and pay $200+ for a hot-air rework station to solder it myself." Yeah, I feel this :)

For just straight up assembly of one-sided SMT boards (i.e. not reclaiming components from a donor board), a $30 plug-in electric skillet and a solder paste stencil from the PCB manufacturer (or patience and a solder paste syringe) works far better than it has any right to. https://www.instructables.com/Simple-Skillet-Surface-mount-S...

I been using these mini pan frying skillets for years for prototype boards. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008863940082.html

And here is the cheap hot air rework station I use. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005989227215.html

You can even opt out of the stencil but I never do cuz it's much easier than not having it.

Re: Building the mouse Logitech won't make

#207

Post by finaard »

orliesaurus wrote: post #129

> After first publishing this article a helpful commenter let me know Logitech released the MX Ergo S in late 2024, with quieter switches, USB-C, and a $20 price increase. Let's just pretend I wrote this article a year ago! Still, at least this project let me avoid some e-waste. How many times does this happen to people? I mean, in my life i probably spent hundreds of hours writing code and hacking things together -…

> I mean, in my life i probably spent hundreds of hours writing code and hacking things together - forcing them to work - for tasks that turned out to be...already solved, I just couldn't find it...it was under the sun all along.

Once you get older it gets even more annoying - sometimes you end up solving a problem, and later on you realize (or, even worse, a friend points it out) that you've solved that already once before a decade ago _and_ published your solution back then.

Re: Building the mouse Logitech won't make

#208

Post by throw-qqqqq »

junon wrote: post #172
throw-qqqqq wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer a regular soldering iron for SMD. Below 0603 I tend to blow off unrelated components if I’m not very very careful! So for me, a loupe/microscope and a fine SMD iron is the best option. I have some China-model that uses Hakko tips.

Kapton tape is your friend for hot air. It's cheap and you can get by with scissors. Tape out anything that you're not reworking, use tweezers and push down the edges against the board to seal as best you can, and then flux it and blow. It'll hold things in place and wick away the heat from anything you're not trying to rework. I went from a near 0% success rate to near 100% with it.

Wow, thanks for the tip! I never heard that one before.

I have a hot air station that I haven’t used much because I found it difficult to control. I will give it another try but with the Kapton!

Re: Building the mouse Logitech won't make

#209

Post by dmonitor »

adregan wrote: post #61
dmonitor wrote: post #22

The open source / open hardware offerings from Ploopy are very attractive for people that don't want to take this route https://ploopy.co They've apparently suspended shipping to the US, though. Not sure who to blame for that one..

I was using a vertical Logitech mouse but was still experiencing discomfort mousing out to the side of my enormous Advantage2 keyboard. In an effort to head off any compounding RSI issues, I switched to a ploopy Adept trackball. Had no idea if I'd like switching to a trackball, and I love it! My hand never moves in an awkward motion, and mousing has become pretty restful. Better be careful tossing the ball up in the…

They're just 1.75" snooker balls. It's very easy to get a big box of them. You'll also quickly notice why red never goes out of stock on Ploopy's website.

Re: Building the mouse Logitech won't make

#210

Post by chinathrow »

Speaking of Logitech - I use the Silent M330 as my daily driver. The last one I bought was of considerable shittier build quality - no rubber grip just plastic, way to lightweight compared to the old model. So in fact, unusable.

Is this a known enshittification issue at Logitech?

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