My first propper mouse mod, will be updating.

So, I've never really done any modding before so this is a complete new branch for me. This is very basic. No really, VERY basic. I'm adding an LED in parallel with the rest of the mouse circuit board. Basic? Sorry I should have mentioned that but everyone's got to start somewhere.

So here's where I'm up to now. I have a mouse with an 800 Ohm resistor in it with a blue diffuse LED that drops 4V when the current is at 20mA. So me thinking I'm a genius did the very basic physics (V = IR) and worked out I needed an 800 Ohm resistor. Sound to hight? Well I soldered it all up nice and neatly, put heatshrink around it all to stop anything from shorting and well... it's dim.

The first pic was taken in the dark with the low light mode enabled. The mouse isn't moving so it's VERY dim. As you can see the blue LED is VERY dim indeed.



The second pic here was taken again with low light mode enabled but with the top of the case on. It's dim.



And finally the last pic. This is with low light mode off and with a desk lamp on. As you can see you can barley even see the blue, not what I was expecting.








So! Where did I go wrong? Well. The LED drops 4V and uses 20mA current. That's all good! I went to pick out a resistor and somehow jumped to the conclusion that I had to drop 4V over the resistor. This is how I got such a high Ohmage resistor, because I was trying to drop 4V instead of the 1V I needed!

I'm off into town soonish to pick up a 50 omnomnom resistor. I'm probably going to go for a 52 or a 54 Ohm resistor just to play it safe but hopefully it'll be second time lucky for me =)

I said I was going to try and replace all the LEDs in my G15 and this was a test to see if I could do it or not, now I'm thinking that's a dead idea until I've practised a bit more.

So! After I've done with this, what do people recommend I do? Hopefully something small that will get me a lot of experience because I would like to replace my G15 lights with some green or deep red LEDs, just need a lot of practice.

And like I said, update will follow within the next week.

Yeah, I dunno how you could get a more powerful LED in there that uses as much or less power than you're already sucking with that first one.
Looks pretty cool though; as long as you're playing in the dark.

I don't think that current will actually be a problem with this. USB 2.0 I think is allocated a max of 500 mA's. External HDDs run off the power USB gives out so I don't see me reaching anything near the current limit.
I could add another few LED but I'm hoping after I go from an 820 ohm resistor down to a 50 ohm resistor the LED will be bright enough not to need to add more LEDs.