Want to mod my mouse

[skool h8r]

hi all,
i've recently been thinking of modding my mouse. First, i was thinking of replacing the LED in it but as i am a bit of a light effects nut, i want to make it glow on and off, a bit like a pulse. Does anybody know any electrical circuit component i could use to make it vary automatically. I know there are variable resistors, but is there one that could vary the current automatically? It needs to be quite small to be able to fit in my mouse. I'm also considering doing the same thing to a keyboard if i can find the right component, like make the caps lock, num lock, scroll lock and the office key (my keyboard is a multimedia one) glow on and off slowly.

Thanks,
Scott.

[Toro]

Is yours an optical mouse? if so, wouldnt changing the LED affect the sensors, especially if you had it pulsing, might have some strange effects...

[skool h8r]

Yes it's optical, but it's a Demon one i got from in tenerife, it was a great deal. It has a blue LED inside that shines out through the sides and makes the scroll wheel glow. That's the LED i want to pulse, not the one underneath.

[danrok]

I'm not sure that it is possible to make an LED glow at different brightness levels. It can be either on or off. Perhaps, someone can confirm this.

Another method would be to filter the light in some way, so that it appears to fade on and off.

[fantomfreq]

Originally Posted by danrok

I'm not sure that it is possible to make an LED glow at different brightness levels. It can be either on or off. Perhaps, someone can confirm this.

There's a light on my laptop that slowly pulses when it's sleeping. The light seems like an LED, but I couldn't tell you for sure.

[MONKEYMAN]

You can make a L.E.D. pulse, look at the power L.E.D. on an amplifier when you put a heavy load on it and crank it up, it will pulse to the music, i know this is down to the amp being overloaded but it demonstrates varying L.E.D. brightness.

[noob]

hook a LED up to a battery, with a pot in series, play with varying settings, is goes brighter and dimmer.

you will need a min amount of current and voltage to make it work. and DONT exceed its max by to much or at all if you can help it.

[Aedan]

If you have microcontroller experience, the easiest way is with a microcontroller performing pulse width modulation. That is, it rapidly turns the LED on and off, changing the on timing and off timing to make the LED appear to change brightness. That's how I produced my colour changing RGB mod. (Cycles through random colours on an RGB LED.)

[Azriel]

use a velman 555 timer kit with a small capacitor between the LED and the circuit.

http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bi...021&type=store

5 bucks plus the cost of a couple capacitors to make the light fade slowly. Might be an interesting effect to only fade one of the lights.

[skool h8r]

Isn't this the same: http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?...SEO&U=Template

It's by the same company. Also, are the capacitors essential? If so, what rating/voltage or whatever would they need to be? Sorry, i'm not mutch of an electronics person, used to be, mainly robots but now computers is my specialty. Also, making it 'flash' wasn't the original idea but now it sounds quite good.