Not much of a hack, just misusing or abusing, whichever you prefer. Tipping one of these things up gives you all kinds of options. Like keeping all that fatty flavor right where it belongs.
A little bacon.
A little Eggs.
Add some cheese and…
Time for Breakfast!
Perhaps taking an old mouse and integrating it into a new Bluetooth mouse isn’t your style. No, you’d rather take an old phone and integrate it into a new Bluetooth phone. This article is for you my friend.
The concept is simple, grab a Bluetooth thingie and cram it into a handset jobbie. The execution, well, that’ll require a bit more dedication and skill. For mine, I used a Motorola Bluetooth speakerphone, because it was generously donated to me by an avid reader.
Once I was sure everything could fit, I grabbed various switches from old computer cases. Since I wouldn’t be able to push the buttons mounted on the circuit board inside on the phone I would need a power, call, volume up and volume down buttons, plus a USB recharge port. Next, I drilled holes to mount them in the handset and glued them in place. I converted the existing hole for the handset cord into my USB port.
Now, I have to warn you, you’ll need a steady hand to solder everything on to these little surface mount boards. Everything that had to be mounted in the other cup, had to have the wires cut, extended, run to the other side of the phone, and reattached. The battery was moved too, just not enough room in the bottom cup.
I opted to keep the cotton wadding installed between the cups, In fact, I even added some foam to help sound quality. Velcro was used to keep the microphone in place while screwing the cover on and off, but still allowing it to be adjusted or removed. I also drilled an additional hole in the circuit board end and filled it with hot glue. This allowed the LED indicator light to be seen.
This thing is tons-o-fun. It gets a double take wherever it is taken. Confuse the hell out of everyone and make one today!
What do we have here…? One of the first ball-less mice of course! This ugly buddy was begging to get used for something else.
Wow, look at that Bluetooth mouse and base station! Hmm, that base station is pretty big. Lets see if we can do something with it, seeing as I charge my batteries separately and don't actually use the charging station to charge the mouse.
Circuit board is lookin pretty small there.
Oh, lookie there, that sucker is just right! Let's back up a step here and show you the insides of the ball-less mouse.
The mouse works on the same principles as a ball mouse, but use's these cages with lines in them to trip the sensors. they are tilted at an angle to allow only a corner of the rubber (now plastic) wheel to grab the surface and turn the cage. You can see the two brown wheels on the top right in the right picture. With all the junk out of the mouse cage, we can put the Bluetooth chipset into the mouse.
I cut and filed the old cable channel off and out to accommodate the larger cable from the base station. seeing as the base station had the charging wires and the USB wires together. I could have modded in a smaller cable, but I figured that I might want to put the base station back together someday and didn't want to cut the connector. A little hot glue to hold the cable in place.
With a little bit of thought, I carefully placed the chipset in such a way that I could actually use a mouse button to press the button on the chipset for finding the mouse! Genius!
I ended up having to clip a bit from the button on the top to get it to work. I only had one chance, so after about 5 or 6 test fits, the button clicked the switch on the board and let it up all the way. lets put er together and screw with customers!
"I am just a simple mouse, please come and use me!"
This worked on a few of our friends. I asked them to check out a few things on my computer and sat in the other room and moved the mouse while they tried operating the Bluetooth base station! It was interesting.
The mouse is a Logitech MX900 Bluetooth mouse. One of the few BT mouses that I know of. I don't have any pictures of it, but there is a blue LED on the circuit board. It gives the mouse a slight blue glow in the dark if you look hard. I wish there was a way to make it glow more.
