Mousesensors - lots of pictures

[Noopy]

Hi all,

I have collected some pictures of the inside of some computermouses.

If you are interested visit: http://www.richis-lab.de/mouse.htm





Have fun! 

[floobydust]

The tear downs look very interesting, the die pictures too.

Can you look for Philips Twin-Eye mouse sensor, like PLN 2030 or PLN 2031. These were Philip's foray into mouse sensors- and they all failed, short lifetime 
Then Philips admitted defeat and left the market. I've always wondered what went wrong with them.

[Noopy]

The tear downs look very interesting, the die pictures too.

I´m glad to hear that!


Philips Twin-Eye? Never heard of them.
Short search on Ebay didn´t show one. But I´ll keep searching. Sounds interesting! 

[floobydust]

Philips Twin-Eye mouse sensor was two lenses looking down at the mouse pad. They used it in their medical imaging products, have patents on it. I think it did poorly with "lift off" LOD when gamers lift up their mouse.

This was a great Wiki but now the URL seems bad http://www.esreality.com/wiki/Hardware:Mice_Sensors
List of mouse sensors used in crappy Razer products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Razer_products

[Noopy]

I found a MadCatz RAT 3 (PLN2030). 
Uuuh, ugly thing... 

I also need a mouse with the Microsoft BlueTrack Technology... 

[Gyro]

The nice thing about some of the older sensor chips, for instance the HDNS2000 (H2000 marking) and OM02, is that they have simple quadrature output modes (individual X and Y direction). That makes them very easy to interface and useful for making high resolution encoders. You can even just use the LED drive pin as an extremely sensitive binary motion detector.

[TimNJ]

I had never given a thought to how optical mouses work. Very interesting. Thanks.

[TurboTom]

I once used an optical mouse sensor with a custom optics mounted overhead to identify a person on a circular patch beneath. This was part of an artistic installation on a building, designed to interact with the surrounding social situation. These sensors (avago adns-2610) were connected to a small PIC microcontroller that daisy-chained the relevant output signal of several such sensor units on a single serial interface. The adns-2610 offers a diagnostic mode that outputs a bitmap of the photodiode array. IIRC, that was what we actually used for adjustment. Later we only needed to know in what direction a pedestrian crosses the circular patch below so we used the sensor in "proper mouse mode". That was quite some fun...

[Noopy]

Can you look for Philips Twin-Eye mouse sensor, like PLN 2030 or PLN 2031. These were Philip's foray into mouse sensors- and they all failed, short lifetime 
Then Philips admitted defeat and left the market. I've always wondered what went wrong with them.

I thought the MadCatz RAT 3 would have a PLN2030-Sensor.
Well that was at least wrong for the model i got.
Nevertheless I will post the RAT 3 soon... 


Ultimately I found the "Cooler Master CM Storm Inferno" which uses a PLN2030-Sensor.

First of all: What a crazy technology! If someone would have told me that it is possible to detect the reflection of the underground with the laser itself (~5µm active area) I would have told him a maniac.  But actually it´s possible.

Here you can see what´s inside the CM Storm Inferno and inside the PLN2030: http://www.richis-lab.de/mouse_1b.htm
Have fun! 


I have a guess what killed the PLN2030 sensors: In most Avago-datasheets you can find warnings regarding ESD sensitivity of the devices. Especially in older mouses there are very big plastic elements below and around the sensor. Additionally parallel to the laser there is always a overvoltage protection semiconductor. But look at the PLN2030:



The sensor has only a small plastic lens which is directly over the hole in the bottom of the mouse. Around the sensor is nothing more. A discharge has only to travel the short way around the lens to reach the metal contacts at the outside of the package which lead directly to the sensor and the laser modules. Parallel to the laser there is only a capacitor which surely has only a small capacitance.
You shouldn't be at all surprised if the PLN2030 often died because of ESD. 

[oPossum]

First of all: What a crazy technology! If someone would have told me that it is possible to detect the reflection of the underground with the laser itself (~5µm active area) I would have told him a maniac.  But actually it´s possible.

[Noopy]

Last but not least here a Microsoft (Infineon) Bluetrack Sensor in a Microsoft Comfort Mouse 4500: http://www.richis-lab.de/mouse_4.htm

The optical system is a little bit special but in my view the technology is not really new:



But in fact it´s a special development by or for Microsoft.


As I already told you I searched for a the PLN2030-Sensor in the MadCatz RAT 3 but what I found was only a Avago A3090.

Here you can see the pictures: http://www.richis-lab.de/mouse_2b.htm

But one thing is interesting with this sensor. It is very similar to the S6090 in the Logitech G9 Laser:


A3090


S6090