USB Stick Mouse

Nobody seems to be happy with just a normal flash drive these days. If you haven't customized your usb stick yet, or you're bored and have the following parts lying around waiting to be used, this guide is for you.

You will need:
-USB flash drive. The smaller, the better. (in physical size, not capacity!)
-USB extension cord.
-Mouse

Since I have made my only USB flash drive into a dolphin, today ill be using this bluetooth dongle.

Step 1 Open up your mouse

On my mouse (the classic Microsoft mouse) I found 2 screws on the bottom side of it. Sometimes you will find these screws, hidden under stickers.

Comments

[copperaxe]

http://www.instructables.com/id/Broken-USB-cable-flash-drive That "broken USB cable" attached to a wireless mouse would be interesting. Might make that just to take it to the library.

Play around on the computer, save some files unplug your "USB mouse" and keep using an unplugged mouse, cable just dangling off the edge of the table

[kbhasi]

"Ooh a mouse. It's a wired mouse and what's with this second apple bluetooth mouse?! which one's the real mouse?"(he 'melts' onto bed)

[Dascooby]

Haha nice idea.

[stephenniall]

Hmm i may make like a linux distro inside a mouse lol With wireless etc

[Dr.Bang]

That's cool! once we get rid of our old computer I'll have an open mouse to, um, play with. I might try this out!

[cornflaker]

Hey you should solder in a small 2 port usb hub and you can have the usb, and the mouse both working at the same time (provided its a usb mouse).

[mage]

a weird thing just happened, after i finished reading this instructable and went to scroll down to find more projects when my scroll wheel crapped out in me. now i have a mouse corpse to work with and a USB cable to strip :D

[mage]

WIN

[GorillazMiko]

Awesome idea! At first I thought it was going to be something else, and suggest what you were doing, but when I got to the end I was like :o and yay!!! Awesome Instructable. +5/5 stars.

[berky93]

hey thanks for the idea! this is a great idea and it works really well. I modified the mouse a bit to fit everything, and glued the scroll wheel back in place (had to remove the part that holds it) and then used some tape and careful placement of the flash drive to hold the mouse ball in place. it loos perfect! I named the flash drive HP MOUSE so even if its plugged in no one will be suspicious, and its completely unnoticeable. not quite as cool as the usb flash drive inside a phone jack idea I was going to try, but much easier and more portable.

[zachninme]

Interesting idea, but it should be noted that if its already a USB mouse, you could splice the USB drives/accessories into the cable and run them both(/all) off the same port.

[shooby]

That's what I thought this was at first. Damn good idea, especially if you had a hidden switch for it. Great place to store passwords, etc.

[zm634]

That would require a USB hub in there as well. Possible, but even trickier.

[klee27x]

Actually, you wouldn't need a hub. USB protocol takes care of all that. You need a hub only when you're extending the physical range of your devices or have to otherwise increase the power supply. Any USB device can act as it's own hub. An interesting mod would be to add a USB PORT to your USB mouse... for when you just don't wanna get up and reach all the way over to your monitor/computer.

[ironsmiter]

"An interesting mod would be to add a USB PORT to your USB mouse"

Google to the rescue.

THough i can find no Instructable covering it...
I-Hacked.com has one.
http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/185/42/

[ironsmiter]

er, no. that's just plain wrong.

USB hubs are almost exactly like network routers in this regard, except they function on the usb protocol instead of the 802. network protocol.

now, many usb devices have hubs built into them, this is true.
xbox controllers(3 port hub. controller and 2 memory slots), many keyboards(especially macs), and even a few mice(usually used to add speciality functions)

very small unpowered 2 port usb hubs can be had, and usually there's enough room inside the palm rest of a mouse, to fit one once it's been uncased.

http://www.instructables.com/community/Mouse-USB-drive/ has a nice little discussion about the very idea.

[klee27x]

Oops. I stand corrected.

[klee27x]

To further clarify, USB is spec'd for a certain distance. Let's call it 15 feet of cable. If you start daisy chaining cables without powered hubs, you'll exceed this spec. Hubs just provide a separate power source so that the voltage drop along the length of cables doesn't become too great. In that way it keeps the voltage in spec, so long as you have a powered hub every 15 feet. This is the reason why you can't buy a USB-approved extension cable (or a USB-powered USB hub). :)

[ironsmiter]

newer "Battery Charging Specification" usb ports can supply over 1.5A of power. I'm currently sitting at a computer with such a port.... It's currently powering my radioshack "flying saucer" usb hub(power input requires 1A 5V). So let's call the "no usb powered usb hubs" a busted myth. straight from the USB wikipedia.. "Since USB can provide power for additional devices connected to the bus, a special type of USB extender cable was created which consists of a miniature one-port USB hub molded into one end of a 5 meter cable" so we'll call the "no usb approved extension cable" partly busted since it is in FACT a hub, while in FUNCTION, an extension. There is also the Cables Unlimited USB Over Cat5e Extender. While it IS true, that 5 meters(~15 feet) is the rated cable length between hubs, they need not be POWERED hubs to achieve the "maximum rating" of 30 meters(5 meters between hubs, maximum 5 hubs, plus a 5 meter cord on the last object) It is my belief that this limit, while coded into software, is mainly a function of "people are gonna try this crap aren't they". Since bus powered hubs(like those soldered into the computer motherboard, that you're plugging into) can provide up to 500mA of power downstream, and each usb device is limited to 100mA startup power... daisy-chained, that's a total of 5 bus powered hubs(seeing the corollary yet?) With that limit in place, most chipset drivers are going to enforce the 5-deep limit, to avoid liability. When someone plugs in that 6th hub, and wonders why it won't work(or why their computer just let out some magic smoke) The company lawyers can point to the USB spec, and say to your lawyers "your bad".

[JamesRPatrick]

I learned something!