Give your mouse second life

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 (tags:diy)
After 7 years of service, my mice is misbehaving. It began flashing and behaving like a strobe. Good sign that LED inside is dying.
 
 
I’m pretty pleased with this mouse and I have various types of LEDs on hand, so I decided to fix it. 
 
First I measured the LED forward voltage, 2.4V. From all colour types I have, only red have forward voltage in this range. So I’m swapping red for red, no fancy colour change this time.
 
 
De-soldered old LED and had to clean dirty PCB little bit:
 
 
 
Soldered new LED:
 
 
Cut the legs:
 
 
And we are done. Putting it back together and testing it if it works:
 
 
 
There is not much to say about such simple procedure. It was so quick that taking photos took much longer. Single unit LED price is in cents range and it’s not time demanding. But still I wonder how many people would rather throw it into garbage then prolong its life.