Maintenance/Mouse button replacement: Difference between revisions

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== Pop the hood<ref>I don't own a car nor do I condone their use but did I grow up in California, USA so everything comes with a car metaphor.</ref> ==

[[File:Mouse in original condition.jpg|thumb|Something's rotten about these microswitches]]

~~To measure~~ missed clicks~~, I used trusty~~ <code>[https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/man/man1/xev.1.xhtml ~~xev]~~</~~code~~> and it showed that the buttons had become sensitive to the exact orientation of my finger. Either something was wrong with the alignment of the broken plastic parts, contact material was worn off of the internal switch, dust sand and chips had gotten in, or all of the above. First thing to do is just put it back together, next I cleaned the stray lint, squirted air all around and flooded the button with isopropyl, finally imagining very hard that I had fixed the issue, yet still nothing changed.

I measured missed clicks with the linux utility <code>xev</code> <ref>https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/man/man1/xev.1.xhtml</ref> and it showed that the buttons had become sensitive to the exact orientation of my finger. Either something was wrong with the alignment of the broken plastic parts, contact material was worn off of the internal switch, dust sand and chips had gotten in, or all of the above. First thing to do is just put it back together, next I cleaned the stray lint, squirted air all around and flooded the button with isopropyl, finally imagining very hard that I had fixed the issue, yet still nothing changed.

Firmly stuck in the honeymoon phase, I believed that a light repair would involve a quick business of swapping out the standard microswitches (silver squares with an orange dot in the middle). They seem to all come in the same vanilla flavor since long before this particular thing was made ten years ago. All 8 solder points are accessible as you might see in this image.

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A fellow Earth defender in my office's IT department orders the new switches and I barely remember the next couple of weeks of missed clicks.

[[File:Desoldering a mouse microswitch.jpg|thumb|Prying the switches off]]

== What could possibly go wrong? ==

To desolder the switches with a single-headed iron rather than a hot air setup or a double-headed iron, I relied on the versatile thumbtack to apply some pressure to the joint as I heated up each pad in turn.

In hindsight, I relearned the lesson that coffee and fine motor work mix poorly. My hands were trembling like leaves and I probably used ten times the force that I should have when pushing the thumbtack under the switch. I also should have pried only at the legs and not at the body of the switch itself.

As you have probably guessed, gentle reader, I tore a bunch of important and small electrical traces off of the top of the board during this step.

Here are some photos of the damage:

[[File:Old and torn microswitches.jpg|none|thumb|Removing the original microswitches has wounded their host]]

[[File:Mouse switch board with missing traces.jpg|none|thumb|There should be no brown visible, this shows that electrical traces were torn away.]]

It's a bit like discovering that some bits of a placenta are missing after birth, this is going to be a serious problem and we cannot continue without knowing exactly what went wrong.

[[File:Microswitch internal circuit.png|thumb|Internal schematic for a microswitch]]

Nonetheless, I thought I would give it a try. After all, the internal wiring for these switches has the left and right pads tied together internally so the circuit board only really needed to have one pad conducting the signal and the other could have been purely for mechanical attachment, which would also explain why the exact same pads tore more easily on each switch.

The new switches went in but I am not proud of my work. I should mention at this point that I'm a complete hack, an unlicensed hobbyist, I was let go from a summer job soldering for a hardware video artist decades ago and unwanted flashbacks of this experience singed my conscience as I sweated over installing the two small switches here.

Okay but it went uneventfully and here is the result now with handsome slate nubs:

[[File:Mouse with new microswitches.jpg|none|thumb|New mouse same as the old mouse]]

There was a slight height difference between the old and new switches, so I was ready to sand down the part of the button which does the internal pressing.

[[File:Two types of microswitch.jpg|none|thumb|Side view of old (left) and new (right) switches]]

This is where the story gets sad: although the mechanical clickiness feels really good now, there is no signal sent from either button. They are dead to the computer.

My photographer sees some pretty trees outside the window and mercifully snaps a few photos of that.

[[File:Trees outside a window.jpg|none|thumb|All is not lost.]]

== Notes ==

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 == Pop the hood<ref>I don't own a car nor do I condone their use but did I grow up in California, USA so everything comes with a car metaphor.</ref> ==
 [[File:Mouse in original condition.jpg|thumb|Something's rotten about these microswitches]]
-To measure missed clicks, I used trusty <code>[https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/man/man1/xev.1.xhtml xev]</code> and it showed that the buttons had become sensitive to the exact orientation of my finger.  Either something was wrong with the alignment of the broken plastic parts, contact material was worn off of the internal switch, dust sand and chips had gotten in, or all of the above.  First thing to do is just put it back together, next I cleaned the stray lint, squirted air all around and flooded the button with isopropyl, finally imagining very hard that I had fixed the issue, yet still nothing changed.
+I measured missed clicks with the linux utility <code>xev</code> <ref>https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/man/man1/xev.1.xhtml</ref> and it showed that the buttons had become sensitive to the exact orientation of my finger.  Either something was wrong with the alignment of the broken plastic parts, contact material was worn off of the internal switch, dust sand and chips had gotten in, or all of the above.  First thing to do is just put it back together, next I cleaned the stray lint, squirted air all around and flooded the button with isopropyl, finally imagining very hard that I had fixed the issue, yet still nothing changed.
 Firmly stuck in the honeymoon phase, I believed that a light repair would involve a quick business of swapping out the standard microswitches (silver squares with an orange dot in the middle).  They seem to all come in the same vanilla flavor since long before this particular thing was made ten years ago.  All 8 solder points are accessible as you might see in this image.
@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 A fellow Earth defender in my office's IT department orders the new switches and I barely remember the next couple of weeks of missed clicks.
+[[File:Desoldering a mouse microswitch.jpg|thumb|Prying the switches off]]
+== What could possibly go wrong? ==
+To desolder the switches with a single-headed iron rather than a hot air setup or a double-headed iron, I relied on the versatile thumbtack to apply some pressure to the joint as I heated up each pad in turn.
+In hindsight, I relearned the lesson that coffee and fine motor work mix poorly.  My hands were trembling like leaves and I probably used ten times the force that I should have when pushing the thumbtack under the switch.  I also should have pried only at the legs and not at the body of the switch itself.
+As you have probably guessed, gentle reader, I tore a bunch of important and small electrical traces off of the top of the board during this step.
+Here are some photos of the damage:
+[[File:Old and torn microswitches.jpg|none|thumb|Removing the original microswitches has wounded their host]]
+[[File:Mouse switch board with missing traces.jpg|none|thumb|There should be no brown visible, this shows that electrical traces were torn away.]]
+It's a bit like discovering that some bits of a placenta are missing after birth, this is going to be a serious problem and we cannot continue without knowing exactly what went wrong.
+[[File:Microswitch internal circuit.png|thumb|Internal schematic for a microswitch]]
+Nonetheless, I thought I would give it a try.  After all, the internal wiring for these switches has the left and right pads tied together internally so the circuit board only really needed to have one pad conducting the signal and the other could have been purely for mechanical attachment, which would also explain why the exact same pads tore more easily on each switch.
+The new switches went in but I am not proud of my work.  I should mention at this point that I'm a complete hack, an unlicensed hobbyist, I was let go from a summer job soldering for a hardware video artist decades ago and unwanted flashbacks of this experience singed my conscience as I sweated over installing the two small switches here.
+Okay but it went uneventfully and here is the result now with handsome slate nubs:
+[[File:Mouse with new microswitches.jpg|none|thumb|New mouse same as the old mouse]]
+There was a slight height difference between the old and new switches, so I was ready to sand down the part of the button which does the internal pressing.
+[[File:Two types of microswitch.jpg|none|thumb|Side view of old (left) and new (right) switches]]
+This is where the story gets sad: although the mechanical clickiness feels really good now, there is no signal sent from either button.  They are dead to the computer.
+My photographer sees some pretty trees outside the window and mercifully snaps a few photos of that.
+[[File:Trees outside a window.jpg|none|thumb|All is not lost.]]
+== Notes ==