Mouse Modding Madness

[catacon]

So...Last week I decided that my computer mice were too boring. I have two Microsoft Optical Mice (the white one). They work well and feel very nice, but they are lacking a little in the aesthetics department. My first thought to fix this was "I wonder why all optical mice always have red LEDs?" After I little research I found that they use red LEDs because they illuminate the best for the camera on the mouse. However, if Ultra-bright blue LEDs (as opposed to regular brightness ones) are used, they will work just as well as red ones. So I set out to change the LEDs from red to blue. Easy enough and in about 10 minutes, I was done. I thought the white and blue looked cool, but I thought black and blue would look even better. So I sent the white cover for one of the mice to my friend who has an airbrush, and he painted it black which looks amazing.

While I was waiting for my friend to finish, I decide to put the other mouse into an Altoids tin. Loosely following the design from Make, I used a Dremel to but the mouse down to size and fixed it into the tin. This did not turn out as well because of the way the mouse is designed, but it is still pretty schweet.

The last mouse I decided to mod is a crappy Logitech. It does not track very well and I use for my laptop on occasion. In my research about the red LEDs in optical mice, I read that using Infrared LEDs with work even better than red ones. So in order to make the mouse a bit better, I switched the red LED to an Infrared and now it is somewhat decent (still not great, but that's OK).

The final thing I did in this modding frenzy was to change the lights on my keyboard from green to blue. I figured, blue mice, blue power lights on the computer case, why not blue lights on the keyboard. So I opened it up, changed the lights, and it looks amazing.

So that's it for me. Here are some pictures, enjoy!

Pics!

[shadowpr]

The black mouse with the blue led looks sweet.

You need to stop giving me ideas. LOL