Laser Tank Mouse

Bought a dirty and broken Amiga tank mouse on Ebay in order to gut it, clean it and mod it with a laser sensor by @jesusdelatorrec

The original Amiga mouse comes with a mouse ball, obviously. I got this mouse for a great price because the movement tracking was jerky and cleaning didn't help. Won't matter to me, because the wheel mechanism will get removed anyways.

The whole mod is very straight forward. Open mouse, remove old board, insert new board, done. But of course that's not what happend. 😄

Turns out there are different hardware revisions of the tank mouse and mine has a little plastic stub that I need to cut off to make the board fit in.

More trouble: The 3D-printed replacement cover doesn't fit properly. It's not tight enough and therefore doesn't lock in place. More tinkering required.

I added small pieces of plastic between the gaps and used hot glue to make sure nothing moves.

The lens now fits nicely and there's no more gap between the cover and the backside of the mouse. I broke off a piece of the 3D-printed cover by accident, but it doesn't seem to matter.

Next problem: Both mouse buttons don't work. I had to loosen up the bottom screw a bit to avoid raising the board at the top. Now everything is flush.

Overall, I'm pleased how much fun this modification was, despite or maybe because of the troubles. 😀

I cleaned the mouse and tested everything. Zero issues and super smooth mouse movements.