Scroll-Wheel Hack

Super inconvenient way to scroll though the web with galloping fingers on fabric buttons. (Smile)

The scroll wheel inside my mouse is a very simple but brilliant mechanism that basically pushes two buttons in succession every time I scroll it fwd one click. The succession of the pressing of these two buttons is opposite if I scroll the wheel in the other direction. Thus it can tell which direction I am turning it and how far or fast I have turned it.

So I de-soldered this scroll wheel from my mouse and replaced it with two fabric buttons which I can now basically gallop on with my fingers to control the scrolling of my mouse and it is a very inconvenient action but I still think it is cool.

Step 1: Materials and Tools

MATERIALS:
- Cheapest mouse you can find (hopefully it will be very similar to mine inside)
- Pen and paper

TOOLS:
- Screw driver
- Soldering iron
- Helping hands
- De-solder or de-soldering tool
- Wire cutters
- Wire strippers
- Multimeter
- Crocodile clips

Comments

[Colonel88]

Hmm... this is only good for nervous people. *tapping fingers*

[delvarworld]

Pretty useless :) . Why not just wire a small motor to the mouse which turns the mousewheel like a gear controlled by the buttons?

[Lance Mt.]

Errrr.... Effort?
I'd much rather glue a smalll animall to it... see how it turns out =|

[A.C.E.]

lol i like your idea better.. late reply

[Azayles]

Fix the original scroll wheel encoder to a hamster wheel, poll the wheel rotations in software and see how fast the hamster's running - and in which direction :-D

[Yerboogieman]

im going to use that in school today!

[stephan288]

Best invention since the electric pig.

[Azayles]

And how! If it wasn't for the Electric Pig, we'd all be in the dark ages still.

[wethecom]

to make somthing useful i think this project would mix together nicely
with the hard drive dj project
...this would eliminate the micro controller portion of the dj project and all the software

hard drive dj project

[Foreverhex]

That has to be the only mouse I have ever seen that has an normal encoder instead of LED encoder.

[CrudeBuster]

Nah, that's very common, some old monitors use it too for menu-selecting spinning controls.

[CrudeBuster]

I agree totally with your arguement.

[hot-fresh-rider]

yep rotary ENCOder scroll wheels can be found on many different brands and at surprising price points. It's completely up to the manufacturer whether they install IR or rotary, whichever happened to be cheaper at the time most probably! Optical can get bits of cat hair in the gears and rotary can loose its accuracy over time.

[xwx]

yeah this seem kind of time consuming for a scroll wheel even though it looks cool... you could change the scroll rate though!

[Joell]

Ouch, either you weren't endowed with too much coordination or something but that looks extremely time consuming even if you were to up the lines-per-scroll number. Doesn't it get annoying after a while by the way? An innovative idea,... just that there has to be a simpler (and cooler) way to use what you've learned.

[Plusea]

I think part of the idea is that it is kind of backwards and not innovative and useless and still kind of cool at the same time...

[Joell]

Oh okay,... if you were just having fun with it it's cool. And btw, thanks; dint know about the micro switches and what not so you saved me having to screw up a mouse to find out. Now at least i'd know what to expect if i ever opened one up :)

[ArtistsWings]

i know this is a strange idea but could you set up a switch for up that auto gallops up and down does down? I am pretty new to electronics but its a thought!

[highvoltageev]

That has to be one of most inefficient-yet-cool instructables I've ever seen. Interesting idea, but very impractical.

[justinkuo]

Thank you for your clear description on how the mouse works. Some time ago, I had imagined using a mouse as part of a distance measuring device attached the front wheel of a bicycle. That device would count up when I rolled the bicycle forward and would count down when rolled backwards. It would be the electronic equivalent of the Jones Counter used for measuring and certifying road running courses.

JonesCounter.com

I imagined the mouse attached to an inexpensive electronic bicycle odometer or palm device. I lack the skills and know how to make this work. Any ideas on how to get started? Thank you. -- Justin

[Bartboy]

I thought you made a huge scroll wheel, LOL!

[endolith]

The scroll wheel inside my mouse is a very simple but brilliant mechanism that basically pushes two buttons in succession every time I scroll it fwd one click.

You mean a rotary encoder? :)

You could hook these buttons up to a simple circuit so that one acts as "scroll up" and one is "scroll down" if you get sick of galloping...

[Plusea]

thanks. i knew (of course) that it had a name. but was really too lazy to go look it up. also, i thought i might get disappointed to find out that it is just another regular component with a name. i was kind of excited when i discovered how it worked by working backwards. but now i will go read about it, because it really is a cool component.

[robots199]

I prefer a griffin powermate from thinkgeek for about fifty bucks.

[=SMART=]

Sweet ! How fast can you go !! haha

[mkamchin]

that sound worse than scrolling with a mouse

[frollard]

In software if you up the 'number of lines per scroll click' it would move a lot quicker...it would be a neat gesture pad on the desktop :D

[Koil_1]

Hey keep those micro switches. Those can be seriously fun to play with in other projects...

[Ph3nomin0n]

Well you could enter a fingerbuidling contest and win heavyweight :)

[browneyedhippie]

This is really cool.. I would love to do something like this...
Love n Peace,
Michele

"Life I love you, All is Groovy"
~
Gourdsandgadgets
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latest up dates on the Family business !
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Gourds By Michele
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[Sigsaucer647]

nice idea, but i dont wanna imagine scrolling through long web pages. my fingers might fall off =d