My family received 10 wireless mice in excellent condition for free, but must eschew the hassle and cost of batteries. How can I add a cable to them to plug them into USB ports like USB mice?
Please don't ask me to sell them, then buy new USB mice.
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Sign up to join this communityMy family received 10 wireless mice in excellent condition for free, but must eschew the hassle and cost of batteries. How can I add a cable to them to plug them into USB ports like USB mice?
Please don't ask me to sell them, then buy new USB mice.
How can I convert a wireless mouse to USB mouse?
You must properly understand the current design of the mouse and the electronics circuit and components. However, they are a business secret, and you will not be able to understand them.
Conclusion: you cannot convert them.
Please don't ask me to sell them, then buy new USB mice.
Nobody asks you to sell them. But if you want USB mice, it is much cheaper to just buy them. You can easily find very good cheap USB mice.
Keep the wireless mice as souvenirs.
A crazy hack (expensive, a lot of work, under-optimal experience) would be to have some adapters 220V / 110V to 3V, and connect the 3V wires to the battery terminals. The data communication would go wireless, while the power will be wired.
There is a chance that a phone charger will work, but it might burn your mouse as well, since it generates 5V instead of 3V.
However, this site is not the right place to ask for these kinds of hacks. Also, the price of a USB mouse is most likely smaller than the price of the hack anyway.
Bottom line: you are welcome to shoot yourself in the foot by converting. However, we warmly recommend you to just use the things the way they were designed.
This would possibly be better off asked on electronics.stackexchange
My thoughts on it are:
You now have a wired mouse that still employs the wireless part in a way that can't get lost or separated from the mouse. If you're happy to just have the power down a cable and still have to use up another USB port for the receiver, perhaps look at getting a USB battery charger designed to charge two AA batteries- it will probably convert the 5v USB into 3v or so and apply it across the batteries in series - it's hence a 5v to 3v ish converter on the end of a wire and if you can hack it into the internals of the mouse and wire it up it'll power it
Give consideration to mounting the cable in a way that repeated movement won't fatigue it
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Also consider that anything hacky might take a few hours for the first mouse and an appreciable amount of time for the subsequent ones. Factoring your hourly rate of pay onto the conversion it would far outweigh the cost of simply paying to replace the mouse with a wired one. Perhaps you could donate the mice to charity, or a local school that would appreciate them (and show their appreciation by offering wired ones in exchange?). A local computer shop or office setup business might have access to new wired mice (like the default basic ones that come with new PCs) if they also supply new high quality mice as part of a computer package - my last place of work bought hundreds of houses desktop PCs tray cane with mouse and keyboard but offered all employees top notch Logitech mice and keyboards anyway and binned the bundled ones
You're wanting to get rid of the battery, and want them connected to an USB port. If you can live with them connecting wirelessly, it could be an option to buy a 1 AA / 2 AA battery eliminator, either powered directly from the main supply or by USB. The price range of these devices varies, a quick search revealed prices from 2-3 USD to 60 USD depending on various factors.
Depending on your level of expertise you can also consider doing this as a DIY project, see instructables or hackaday for some more information. Basically it involves creating something to put in the battery compartment, and then making a small electrical circuit to provide the needed power.
You can't. The wireless mice lack circuitry essential for the USB link. By the time you've added that, you've spent more than you would on 10 new USB mice.