A couple months ago I was helping my dad set up a new computer at his office, and nearby, I noticed that one of his employees had a wheel mouse that didn't work very well. It was an older mouse with a rubber ball for positioning, but new enough to have a scroll wheel on top. I could hardly move the scroll wheel and the mouse ball's encoders were gunked up. I took it apart and cleaned it. But the scroll wheel still didn't work. So I repeatedly disassembled it further than before and cleaned it more, and finally it basically worked. The problem was that there was so much gunk — hand lotion, dead skin cells, oil, dirt, lint, etc. — that the rotational encoders were not moving. Applying more force to rotate the scroll wheel only caused it to depress (as it is also a button). I appreciate tactile feedback, but the experience left me wishing it was a fully optical mouse even in the scroll wheel. Mice are not built to make cleaning the scroll wheel encoder easy (they must be taken apart with a screw driver), and if this older mouse is typical, many will need their scroll wheel encoders cleaned in time.
The obvious solution is to use an optical system, such as is used to determine positional motion in newer mice. These optical mice use a simple two-dimensional array of CMOS or CCD light sensors and an LED to illuminate the surface over which they move; some logic determines how the mouse is moving in orthogonal directions. What I would like is an optical mouse that also has an optical scrolling sensor on top, shaped approximately like scroll wheels are, but shorter and unmoving. The transparent scroll hump would detect the degree a finger moves over it forward and backward and operate vertical scroll bars like mouse scroll wheels now do. Moving left and right would control horizontal scroll bars. If pressed, the hump would also act as a middle button of course. The focus of the light sensor would need to be limited to immediately above the top surface of the scroll hump to prevent false readings, such as movements by the user to grasp the mouse. The user's finger should probably be illuminated over the scroll hump by an infrared LED, which would not irritate users' eyes as does looking directly at the red LEDs that optical mice currently employ.
I have not seen anything like this on the market, and I think it would be a good product. Unfortunately, my dad says he has written patents for Microsoft's mice and would have a conflict of interest in representing me on this, thus I don't have the resources to patent it. C'est la vie. Oh well, it's probably obvious anyways.
Posted by seander at June 21, 2004 05:14 AM