Hacking Your Mouse To Fix The Misclick Of Doom

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I love logitech mices beside the fact that many of their buttons usually have to be fixed within 2-3 years and i don't live in a very humid climate where oxidization is accelerated, most mice vendors use about the same switches so its not hard to imagine pretty much all of them also suffer from the same issue - So my guess is quite simple, why make a mouse that last 10 years when they can sell 3-4 of them in the same time and make more proffit, after all thats what all the tie's in a company is intressted in.
 

If people, companies and governments were genuinely concerned about the environment, these sort of easily preventable failure modes would not be tolerated. But for that to happen, more people have to be aware that a particular failure mode is easily preventable at a negligible cost: unless people are made aware that a particular failure mode is BS, most won't question it and just replace devices.

There is a simple way governments could cut out most BS failures: increase the minimum warranty on most electronics to 3-5 years. This would force companies to be that much more conservative in their corner cutting.
 
im so sick of mice wearing out, you finally found the perfect mouse, then 4-5 years later it dies, and you are on the hunt again because that model is no longer in production, and quality took a nose dive while you were away.
Click to expand...

I found a mouse liked, tried it out for a few months, then bought three more that are sitting in my closet waiting for the first to fail. Based on my experience with Logitech mice, I should have 25-30 years of consistent performance ahead of me.

By the time those fail there should be a new hmi standard to replace mice.
 
http://www.epicpants.com/t-shirts/tek-syndicate-gaming-mouse-standard-issue


Problem solved.
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Not quite. Omron switches ARE the problem, they are not a selling point. I have a stack of g700/s mice in my bedroom with all manor of clicking issues. I finally took to repairing them myself. Open the switch, flatten or enhance the curve on the contact(bounce seems to be a goldilocks zone), and I am yet to have a repeat failure though I know it is only a matter of time before I am doing it again.

Yeah I would pay 100$ for a mouse that had anti bounce in it. I already have 400$ of mice sitting around doing nothing with failed switches that are replacements for an otherwise irreplaceable g700.

Funny though, my MS intellimouse had the whole button mechanically collapse and it still clicked like a champ, no bounce, no issues dragging a square across your desktop, whatever. I had that mouse so long it has my hand print worn into the finish and my finger prints worn into the buttons. I have a hard time believing this is an insurmountable issue in the industry. I find all "gaming grade" hardware has this issue TBH, aside from mechanical keyboards. Shame the extra buttons are so handy, I long for my intellimouse reliability.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the officially techie jargon used to refer to more than one mouse in the English language - contrary to the plural of mouse in the English language - is "mouses". We should only use "mice" when referring to the rodent.
 
Awesome article.Thanks Daniel!

I think the first Mfr. that incorporates the debounce circuitry and markets it will get the the entire gamer market. Hype is king!
 
Nice article, it got me to clean up the scrolling wheel on my cheapo RX300 again, it has been acting up lately with all the crud getting into the wheel mechanism.
 
If you just like playing around with electronics this could be a cool project.

But, if you just want to fix your mouse, replace the switch. I have two Logitech mice that are 6yrs old. I have had to replace the left click buttons on both.
I got 10 switches for about 5 bucks. The hardest part is the de-soldering. This can be made easier by disassembling the switch somewhat.

But, again if you want play around with electronics, I get that too.
 


I hope that was tongue in cheek.

Just what we need in government, a department of electronics warranties.
 
This article encouraged me to sign up.

It's always infuriating when a single click turns into a double, triple, or quadruple click [The easy way to detect this is to click in a paragraph: a double click selects the word, triple selects the sentence, and quad selects the paragraph]. Many mice have done this to me over the years. I usually trash them.

Just a few weeks ago, I finally got tired of taking my anger out on the button (you know, were you pound the absolute shit out it in an attempt to beat it into submission), and opened up the mouse to swap the left and right buttons. It was a pretty quick soldering job, and PROBLEM SOLVED, at least until the "new" left button starts acting up. BTW: the worn out left button works fine for right-clicking, mainly since it's only used to display a popup menu, and the worst that could happen is the menu might get dismissed (but typical menu logic seems to prevent that from happening most of the time; try it on the desktop, no matter how many right-clicks you do, the menu stays put).

Oh, and I also have a Trackman Marble, but it's been retired for many years (it works fine; I simply stopped using it).
 

Many countries have consumer protection laws and a section of trade law about "fitness for the intended purpose" that already cover it. What I said is merely an amendment to existing laws to discourage designing electronics with excessively short lifespans.

TVs and tons of old electronics from 25+ years ago still work fine today. Back then, companies tried to build the best devices they could to earn their reputation and get more sales that way. Today, companies try to sweep widespread premature failure reports under the rug.


I would be surprised if none of them had, at least at one time in some specific models. As I said, these SPDT debounce tricks have been known for decades, I am merely denouncing the fact that they aren't being used.
 
The reason that they won't go with lifetime switches, either through circuitry fixes as seen in this article or going to optical switches boils down to revenue.

If you are quite pleased with a mouse that lasts for several years until the common button failure, you are more likely to buy another one from them, possibly even the same model.

I love my Logitech mice, specifically the marathon mouse. years of use before requiring a new battery. Not inexpensive though. The problems that you mentioned started up on one of my 2 mice, the one I use at home, and I forked out the funds to replace it.

BTW - This article get's Toms white-listed from my ABP for a while.
 
I got 10 switches for about 5 bucks. The hardest part is the de-soldering. This can be made easier by disassembling the switch somewhat.
Click to expand...

A tip to make desoldering much easier - use some new solder to make the solder joint blob larger. This will soften it (especially if you're using non-RoHS solder, that is lead solder with no silver) and make it easier to reheat it so you ca pull the component out.
 
I have one of those, but mine had been abused far more than any other mouse I have had and is buttons are still good, meanwhile I have had a Logitech g5 that had buttons start giving problems, a USB version of the trackman do the same, and the newer wireless one also give the same problem, while the old ps2 trackman I used far longer than all of these others combined, but it still works fine.
 

Having silver in lead-based solder does not make it significantly harder to work with. What greatly "softens" lead-free solder is the addition of lead to the formerly lead-free (96-99.5% tin) alloy, reducing the melting temperature of the solder from 220-250C to 180-200C. That makes it much easier and quicker to melt.

When I build or repair PCBs, I try to use lead-free solder (96/3.5/0.5 SnAgCu) whenever I can but when I lose patience with a large component, wire that won't wet even with extra flux or do not want to risk overheating the board/component, I bring out the 63/37 SnPb.

If you want to make desoldering even easier and your application does not require meeting any specific soldering standards, you can add a bismuth alloy to drop the melting temperature to 120-140C.
 
This fix was kind of crazy. If you're going to solder anyway, replacing the switches would probably be a fair amount easier, and they can be ordered for a few dollars online. It's also often possible to get the existing switches working again by bending the metal spring mechanism to once again produce a reliable click. I'm actually still regularly using a Logitech MX500 that's seen heavy use for over a decade, and it's still working well with the original switches. There have been a couple occasions where a button started to misbehave, but I was able to restore proper functionality just by opening the device and exercising the switch mechanism with a small screwdriver, after which the clicks return to normal, and remain that way for years.

I did find it interesting about the manufacturers leaving out a bit of simple circuitry to save a few cents while simultaneously ensuring their mice don't last too long though. And sure, maybe they could charge an extra $5 or so to ensure the switches on premium mice remain in proper working order for many years, but that's a feature that might be difficult to market, and ultimately, they'd likely make more money selling you a new replacement mouse every few years. Perhaps they could market it as having premium components, and include a longer warranty though.
 

Replacing the switches wouldn't have been half as satisfying as reminding people that there are glitch-free debouncing techniques out there and demonstrating a practical application of one of them.

In the case of the "memory" implementation, it might even be a net negative cost fix since the negligible IC R&D would be offset by the simpler PCB design. While it may not make sense to spin a new chip and PCB for this feature alone, it would be practically free for the next spin prompted by other features that require a new chip and PCB spin anyway.

A micro-controller with software-programmble pull-up/down on its pins could even emulate the memory implementation by setting the pull-up/down to match whatever the last input was on input change interrupts. This would still require a minor PCB update to wire the switches across Vcc and GND though.
 
My problem with mice is that Logitech's choice of switches is just plain bad; I had an optical, wireless mouse from them a while back (maybe 8 years) and got four or five years of solid use out of it, replaced with a new equivalent (MX Revolution) with a left click that went bad after several months, replaced it, same issue a few months later, then the third was okay, until a few days after its warranty expired, same issue.

So we've got one model with 4-5 years, and another with an average of maybe 6 months over three mice. Not a big enough sample size to be conclusive of course, but complaints about switch failures is a pretty big percentage of complaints around Logitech.

Also their Mac drivers suck ass.

Problem is, they're the only company that seems to make a thumb-trackball anymore, which is annoying as love them, never want to go back to a standard mouse for regular use. For gaming I prefer controllers anyway, am not too bothered about being super competitive, though the Steam Controller gets pretty damned close with the right settings.
 
Daniel, Thank-you for such a delightful article that shows you truly know your subject. As an old and bold techie I almost had a tear in the eye for your attention to detail. I was trained in the days when equipment cost so much that one had to fix it. None of my customers today would dream of spending labour costs on a replaceable item. Your assertion that a simple de-solder and replacement of switches is best, I agree with, but your efforts for the sheer art of it were entirely worth it. Good job sir!
 
Thanks for this fantastic article. So rare to see something this detailed and relevant to all computer users. I wonder what the life expectancy of a mouse with this type of design would be in comparison to your typical Logitech mouse. My G700 is exhibiting the unwanted double-clicks and even random drops while dragging. Quite frustrating to know that this type of failure could have been designed out so simply and cheaply on such an expensive mouse if they didn't actually want it to fail.
 

The next thing I would expect to fail is the cord for a corded mouse due to conductor metal fatigue causing wires to break and become intermittent - I believe that's how the $20 Logitech Optical mouse I bought for my father's PC died but I haven't investigated it yet. For a wireless mouse with a rechargeable battery, the battery would be next in line. If the mouse uses a proprietary wireless dongle, then losing that dongle would be high on my risk factor chart too. There is not much left beyond that aside from accidents.

Mice do not use much power, which means there is no heat and negligible ripple current to age components. Once the mechanical factors have been eliminated, the mouse should last until its NVRAM firmware dies from bit rot after 15-30 years. That's plenty of time to fail due to a coffee spill, getting crushed under a foot after falling on the floor or any number of other accidents.

Many people would still replace their mice on a regular cycle simply due to cosmetic wear, friction shoes wear, weakening tactile feedback, dust getting in the optics and causing tracking errors, dust and grime making it look filthy, etc.
 
i repaired a wireless logitech mouse the first of it's kind with the scroll wheel, from the era of this track man, pretty sure it was some where around 2001-2003. i went in with curiosity and took apart the omron switch also, i rebent the copper, gave it the appropriate amount of kink, reseated it fiddled to get that micro copper plate in just right put it back together tried it out failed a few times before i got it all right repeating that process, soldering it back in. yes it's click pressure was way off 1/2 as weak for the most part.....then i took apart some brand new $3 mouse, desoldered it's omoron switch and put it in my wireless mouse and was good as new. i had looked at radio shack at the time for a new switch before i tried to fix the bad switch, but they didn't carry those parts at the time and it wasn't until 2008 that i noticed they carried them.
now you can get them on ebay by the 100 pack for dirt cheap.

i remember watching something on youtube about using some spray wd-40 or gunk silicone spray idr; many years ago and i tried it on that mouse in 2009 and it worked great and then i discovered the microsoft X-8 mouse in 2010 and have been using that ever since with the only problem is microsoft dropping software support and using iTouch support software with limited and difficult programming capabilities, and have been contemplating the leap to a mouse with significantly more buttons and haven't found one i love yet but look closely at the logitech g700s and g602 the 602's buttons feel flimsy as eggshells.
most mice are tiny these days, built for elementary school students and the ones that are large are mostly limited to 2-6 buttons and the ones with lots of buttons are all corded.
maybe i'm picky, or maybe i just demand the best.
 
Just to add to the love fest, I also very much enjoyed reading this article. Great job! :)

I made an amateurish attempt to mod a couple of particularly annoying laptop mice into something more quiet once but that's about the extent of anything I've tried.
 
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