Wireless Amiga Tank Mouse | Hacker News Reader

Wireless Amiga Tank Mouse

lyonsden.net

118 pointsjandeboevrie44 comments

I wish manufacturers would use AA/AAA batteries more to power their thingy. Now they make USB rechargeable AA/AAA batteries. These batteries are standard, cheap, can be bought everywhere and are easily replaceable.

My Logitech MX Master 3S is a great mouse. It has everything I want in a mouse but no standard battery. Not even replaceable (no screws, everything glued together). I dread the day the battery will die. Then the mouse is just junk to be tossed in a landfill.

I had to use my old TI89 calculator the other day. Took it out of the drawer where it has been sitting for maybe 10 years. Insert some 4 AAA batteries that I took from my remote and my thermometer station and it just works.

I hate that every manufacturer under the sun sells products with rechargeable Li-Ion batteries, yet none of them limit the charge to 80% for battery health. I don‘t get it. Do we really love e-waste this much?

No but manufacturers love selling new devices very much. We have to start naming and shaming them a lot more before this changes.

You probably can remove the adhesive Teflon-gliding-strip to reveal screw holes. Then replace the lipo pack.

I recently replaced a broken left click Omron D2F-01F micro switch in my Logitech MX vertical (open mouse, desolder 3 Pins, resolder new part, put all together again). The lipo pack is tiny and quite accessible inside.

It is doable but a bit of a nuisance. Took me about one hour (opening, ordering, change part, put all together again). Working again, even better than before due to the upgraded premium switch

I think opening is easy. What's hard is to get it back to the same state afterwards. Or at least a decent one.

It's fine. Even if you just push a screwdriver in, the resulting hole does not affect performance. I did that multiple times on my logitech m500s. But for extra kink you can just unglue the pads with some isopropanol.

Usually either the wheel wears out, or electronics fail before pads become a problem.

In fact, you probably should punch a hole in the Teflon. Whenever I've taken the pads out, I've never managed to put them back on and have it work as before. Usually, either some glue or some plastic catches somewhere, and the mouse's feel gets noticeably worse.

well yes, you can in fact glue them back in with some special glue and much effort, then clean up with a scalpel, then ... but it's not worth the time.

just punch it.

Yeah, I could use UHU Por and it would come out good, but what happened was that one of the Teflon corners turned downwards while I was pulling it off, and that kept catching on the mat forever after.

Yep, had that before. So i decided to cut away the Teflon around the 5 screw holes using a fresh (=really sharp) carpet knife. Nothing bent, no protruding corners, same gliding performance with just a different look from the now exposed holes at the underside...

I agree. Logitech makes some products with replaceable batteries: I have an Ergo M575 trackball (their low-cost trackball) and it uses a single AA battery that lasts over a year for me when being used daily at work.

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/m575-ergo-wirel...

The Logitech G603 runs on either one or two AA batteries, so it can be very lightweight in one battery mode, which is the main advantage of built-in packs.

Yup, i specifically look for products with removable batteries. Head torch for Dad, removable batteries. Desk timer for me, removable batteries. You have to scroll past a load of Chinese brands all selling the same white label product to get to them though.

A USB rechargeable torch sounds like a terrible idea to me anyway. I would want to know I could use it quickly at a pinch, not have to wait an hour to charge it.

You dont leave it flat, like every other battery device.

You are far more organized than me if you remember to keep every device with a battery fully charged.

Just swap batteries on critical devices (and rotate them to less critical, eg flashlight -> tv remote) once a year when you check your smoke alarms.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Logitech+MX+Master+3S+Battery+R...

3s is very fixable. Had my scroll-wheel locking up, because of a fall. Turns out the inner workings of the scroll wheel were broken, jamming it. Removed the broken pieces, glued it, working fine again..

I believe it. It looks more than doable from that ifixit.

I've replaced the switches in a Logitech G305, and it wasn't too bad.

The mouse itself was fairly straight forward to get into. Move the pads, undo the screws, a little time probing around with a spudger.

Borrowed the switches out of a Raspberry Pi mouse I had in a spare parts bin. Opted to replace the feet at the same time.

Some minutes soldering later and reassembly, worked as well as it always had.

Why don't they put Li-Ion cells inside AA batteries? I think most rechargable AAs are NIMH, why not lithium, wouldn't that be much better?

Or does it have to do with lifespan?

Some chinesium fence post capping solar lights I got from Amazon and installed at my mother's home in 2022 included LiFePo4 AAA batteries. I think it's just a matter of time before they're more ubiquitous in the US...

The chemistries produce a very different voltage, you need a tiny converter circuit inside each canister, which then has its own quiescent current draw. They make these, and they're good for some applications.

They do. Lithium ion has a 3.7V nominal voltage compared to the 1.5V of alkaline and 1.2V of NiMH, and so liions in the AA format are called 14500s (14mm diameter 50mm length) and 11500s in AAA format. There's also liion AAs with voltage regulators to provide 1.5V that often have a USB micro B or C port on them

There are both AA-shaped Li-ion batteries meant to be used with spacers, as well as USB-C charged AA batteries. It scares electronics-savvy people(myself included) but the market do seem to be growing.

One thing I dislike about AA/AAA batteries is eWaste. I have a bunch of rechargeables around but don't think everyone uses them when there's cheap packs of 20 AAAs available. Using rechargeables have an up-front cost not everyone wants to pay.

Some of us are reusing!

There are numerous single-use devices in healthcare for sterility purposes. One common device hooks up to vacuum and fluids and provides irrigation and suction capability in laparoscopic surgery cases, and it uses 8 AA batteries that are sealed in at the factory. At the end of the case, the device is discarded.

It's pretty standard for people to take the batteries out (they've barely been used) before throwing it away. I haven't bought AA batteries in nearly two decades.

I didn't even know they had changed to nonstandard/non-replaceable. My Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse certainly take normal AAA batteries.

> I wish manufacturers would use AA/AAA batteries more to power their thingy.

My Razer Deathadder mouse has:

- Bluetooth

- wireless dongle for lower latency

- can be powered by an AA or AAA cell

Just an amazing mouse all around for both gaming and office use. I used to be all in on Logitech but they've just dropped the ball on their recent stuff.

I own this mouse. The battery needs replacing every couple weeks. I would have paid twice the price for something rechargeable (before I knew how spotty the scrolling is).

Uhm, get some rechargeable AAA batteries? It's what I use with my boring wireless mouse.

I guess what I'm saying is I'd pay more to charge my mouse every six months rather than every two weeks.

RetroGames.biz, makers of THEC64 and THEA500, also sell TheMouse, a wired tank style mouse for use with THEA500. It's a USB device, however, and will work with a PC or a real Amiga with Tom adapter.

I picked up a TheGamepad, their Amiga CD32-styled gamepad, for use with my MiSTer.

The article brought a 30 year old memory to the surface: the strangely satisfying experience of the weekly clean of the Amiga mouse’s ball and rollers.

I use a trackball: I still get the same experience every week (or, let's be honest, every month or so).

I must say that is a part of old computing I am not missing at all.

I miss more the soft feeling and weight of that mouse ball on the palm of my hand, removed from the mouse to play with it while doing something else. I miss less having to look for it under some piece of furniture after dropping it accidentally.

You can 3D print a Tank Mouse, paired with wireless mouse components from Bambu Lab (not really compatible with legacy computers, it's just a generic wireless mouse, but cool for those that just want the look)

https://us.store.bambulab.com/products/wireless-mouse-compon...

https://makerworld.com/en/models/102163

Okay, a touch-sensitive invisible scroll-strip between the buttons is _genius_. I need to learn more about how those features are embedded into the case plastic.

It's interesting how much the Amiga GUI looks like early Macintosh OS. What's up with that?

Pretty cool.

https://lyonsden.net/wordpress_s/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/...

Now all we need is a full-sized Amiga keyboard.

I’m not joking - a lot of the experience of using an old computer is the physical side - cycle-accuracy only takes you so far, and even a software emulator with the proper form factor is better than an FPGA implementation with the wrong one.

I forgot I have one of these, I should really get an Amiga one day.

I have been using one since it came out. The touch scroll strip is very spotty, not sure how much of that is software, but fine product otherwise.

If you open it up, the strip is actually a thin PCB glued to the underside of the top of the case. Mine was a little loose, pressing it down made things work a bit better. It does still get worse at tracking when the batteries start running down (a sign that they need replaced/charged!).

Even when it’s working well, its resolution is disappointingly low though. More like a mouse with a scroll wheel with fairly large detents than the trackpad-like scrolling I was expecting.

My cursor! What happened to my cursor?

Cybertruck

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