Mechanical mice
 Operating an opto-mechanical mouse.
- moving the mouse turns the ball.
- X and Y rollers grip the ball and transfer movement
- Optical encoding disks include light holes.
- Infrared LEDs shine through the disks.
- Sensors gather light pulses to convert to X and Y vectors.
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German company
Telefunken published on their early ball mouse, called "Rollkugel" (German for "rolling ball"), on October 2, 1968.
[12] Telefunken's mouse was then sold commercially as optional equipment for their
TR-440 computer, which was first marketed in 1968. Telefunken did not apply for a patent on their device.
Bill English, builder of Engelbart's original mouse,
[14] created a ball mouse in 1972 while working for
Xerox PARC.
[15]
The ball mouse replaced the external wheels with a single ball that could rotate in any direction. It came as part of the hardware package of the
Xerox Alto computer. Perpendicular
chopper wheels housed inside the mouse's body chopped beams of light on the way to light sensors, thus detecting in their turn the motion of the ball. This variant of the mouse resembled an inverted
trackball and became the predominant form used with
personal computers throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The Xerox PARC group also settled on the modern technique of using both hands to type on a full-size keyboard and grabbing the mouse when required.
Mechanical mouse, shown with the top cover removed. The scroll wheel is grey, to the right of the ball.
The ball mouse has two freely rotating rollers. They are located 90 degrees apart. One roller detects the forward–backward motion of the mouse and other the left–right motion. Opposite the two rollers is a third one (white, in the photo, at 45 degrees) that is spring-loaded to push the ball against the other two rollers. Each roller is on the same shaft as an
encoder wheel that has slotted edges; the slots interrupt infrared light beams to generate electrical pulses that represent wheel movement. Each wheel's disc, however, has a pair of light beams, located so that a given beam becomes interrupted, or again starts to pass light freely, when the other beam of the pair is about halfway between changes.
Simple logic circuits interpret the relative timing to indicate which direction the wheel is rotating. This
incremental rotary encoder scheme is sometimes called quadrature encoding of the wheel rotation, as the two optical sensor produce signals that are in approximately
quadrature phase. The mouse sends these signals to the computer system via the mouse cable, directly as logic signals in very old mice such as the Xerox mice, and via a data-formatting IC in modern mice. The driver software in the system converts the signals into motion of the mouse cursor along X and Y axes on the computer screen.
Hawley Mark II Mice from the Mouse House
The ball is mostly steel, with a precision spherical rubber surface. The weight of the ball, given an appropriate working surface under the mouse, provides a reliable grip so the mouse's movement is transmitted accurately. Ball mice and wheel mice were manufactured for Xerox by Jack Hawley, doing business as The Mouse House in Berkeley, California, starting in 1975.
[16][17] Based on another invention by Jack Hawley, proprietor of the Mouse House,
Honeywell produced another type of mechanical mouse.
[18][19] Instead of a ball, it had two wheels rotating at off axes.
Key Tronic later produced a similar product.
[20]
Modern computer mice took form at the
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) under the inspiration of Professor
Jean-Daniel Nicoud and at the hands of
engineer and
watchmaker André Guignard.
[21] This new design incorporated a single hard rubber mouseball and three buttons, and remained a common design until the mainstream adoption of the scroll-wheel mouse during the 1990s.
[22] In 1985,
René Sommer added a
microprocessor to Nicoud's and Guignard's design.
[23] Through this innovation, Sommer is credited with inventing a significant component of the mouse, which made it more "intelligent;"
[23] though optical mice from Mouse Systems had incorporated microprocessors by 1984.
[24]
Another type of mechanical mouse, the "analog mouse" (now generally regarded as obsolete), uses
potentiometers rather than encoder wheels, and is typically designed to be
plug compatible with an analog joystick. The "Color Mouse", originally marketed by
RadioShack for their
Color Computer (but also usable on
MS-DOS machines equipped with analog joystick ports, provided the software accepted joystick input) was the best-known example.
[edit]Optical and laser mice
A wireless optical mouse on a mousepad
A standard wireless mouse and its connector
Main article:
Optical mouse
Optical mice make use of one or more
light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and an imaging array of
photodiodes to detect movement relative to the underlying surface, rather than internal moving parts as does a mechanical mouse. A laser mouse is an optical mouse that uses coherent (laser) light.
The earliest optical mice detected movement on pre-printed mousepad surfaces, whereas the modern optical mouse works on most opaque surfaces; it is unable to detect movement on specular surfaces like glass. Laser diodes are also used for better resolution and precision. Battery powered, wireless optical mice flash the LED intermittently to save power, and only glow steadily when movement is detected.
[edit]Inertial and gyroscopic mice
Often called "air mice" since they do not require a surface to operate, inertial mice use a tuning fork or other
accelerometer (
US Patent 4787051) to detect rotary movement for every axis supported. The most common models (manufactured by Logitech and Gyration) work using 2 degrees of rotational freedom and are insensitive to spatial translation. The user requires only small wrist rotations to move the cursor, reducing user fatigue or "
gorilla arm".
Usually cordless, they often have a switch to deactivate the movement circuitry between use, allowing the user freedom of movement without affecting the cursor position. A patent for an inertial mouse claims that such mice consume less power than optically based mice, and offer increased sensitivity, reduced weight and increased
ease-of-use.
[25] In combination with a wireless keyboard an inertial mouse can offer alternative ergonomic arrangements which do not require a flat work surface, potentially alleviating some types of repetitive motion injuries related to workstation posture.
[edit]3D mice
Also known as bats,
[26] flying mice, or wands,
[27] these devices generally function through ultrasound and provide at least three
degrees of freedom. Probably the best known example would be
3Dconnexion/Logitech's SpaceMouse from the early 1990s. In the late 1990s Kantek introduced the 3D RingMouse. This wireless mouse was worn on a ring around a finger, which enabled the thumb to access three buttons. The mouse was tracked in three dimensions by a base station.
[28] Despite a certain appeal, it was finally discontinued because it did not provide sufficient resolution.
A recent consumer 3D pointing device is the
Wii Remote. While primarily a motion-sensing device (that is, it can determine its orientation and direction of movement), Wii Remote can also detect its spatial position by comparing the distance and position of the lights from the
IR emitter using its integrated IR camera (since the
nunchuk accessory lacks a camera, it can only tell its current heading and orientation). The obvious drawback to this approach is that it can only produce spatial coordinates while its camera can see the sensor bar.
A mouse-related controller called the SpaceBall
[29] has a ball placed above the work surface that can easily be gripped. With spring-loaded centering, it sends both translational as well as angular displacements on all six axes, in both directions for each. In November 2010 a German Company called Axsotic introduced a new concept of 3D mouse called 3D Spheric Mouse. This new concept of a true six degree-of-freedom input device uses a ball to rotate in 3 axes without any limitations.
[30]
[edit]Tactile mice
In 2000,
Logitech introduced the "tactile mouse", which contained a small
actuator that made the mouse vibrate. Such a mouse can augment user-interfaces with
haptic feedback, such as giving feedback when crossing a
window boundary. To surf by touch requires the user to be able to feel depth or hardness; this ability was realized with the first electrorheological tactile mice
[31] but never marketed.
[edit]Ergonomic mice
[edit]Gaming mice
These mice are specifically designed for use in
computer games. They typically employ a wide array of controls and buttons and have designs that differ radically from traditional mice. It is also common for gaming mice, especially those designed for use in
real-time strategy games such as
StarCraft or
League of Legends, to have a relatively high sensitivity, measured in dots per inch (DPI). Ergonomic quality is also an important factor in gaming mice, as extended gameplay times may render further use of the mouse to be uncomfortable.
[32]
[edit]Connectivity and communication protocols
A Microsoft wireless Arc mouse
To transmit their input, typical cabled mice use a thin electrical cord terminating in a standard connector, such as
RS-232C,
PS/2,
ADB or
USB. Cordless mice instead transmit data via
infrared radiation (see
IrDA) or
radio (including
Bluetooth), although many such cordless interfaces are themselves connected through the aforementioned wired serial buses.
While the electrical interface and the format of the data transmitted by commonly available mice is currently standardized on USB, in the past it varied between different manufacturers. A
bus mouse used a dedicated interface card for connection to an
IBM PC or compatible computer.
Mouse use in DOS applications became more common after the introduction of the Microsoft mouse, largely because Microsoft provided an open standard for communication between applications and mouse driver software. Thus, any application written to use the Microsoft standard could use a mouse with a driver that implements the same API, even if the mouse hardware itself was incompatible with Microsoft's. This driver provides the state of the buttons and the distance the mouse has moved in units that its documentation calls "
mickeys",
[33] as does the
Allegro library.
[34]
[edit]Serial interface and protocol
Standard PC mice once used the
RS-232C serial port via a
D-subminiature connector, which provided power to run the mouse's circuits as well as data on mouse movements. The Mouse Systems Corporation version used a five-byte protocol and supported three buttons. The Microsoft version used a three-byte protocol and supported two buttons. Due to the incompatibility between the two protocols, some manufacturers sold serial mice with a mode switch: "PC" for MSC mode, "MS" for Microsoft mode.
[35]
[edit]PS/2 interface and protocol
With the arrival of the
IBM PS/2 personal-computer series in 1987, IBM introduced the
eponymous PS/2 interface for mice and keyboards, which other manufacturers rapidly adopted. The most visible change was the use of a round 6-pin
mini-DIN, in lieu of the former 5-pin connector. In default mode (called
stream mode) a PS/2 mouse communicates motion, and the state of each button, by means of 3-byte packets.
[36] For any motion, button press or button release event, a PS/2 mouse sends, over a bi-directional serial port, a sequence of three bytes, with the following format:
| Bit 7 | Bit 6 | Bit 5 | Bit 4 | Bit 3 | Bit 2 | Bit 1 | Bit 0 |
|---|
| Byte 1 | YV | XV | YS | XS | 1 | MB | RB | LB |
|---|
| Byte 2 | X movement |
|---|
| Byte 3 | Y movement |
|---|
Here, XS and YS represent the sign bits of the movement vectors, XV and YV indicate an overflow in the respective vector component, and LB, MB and RB indicate the status of the left, middle and right mouse buttons (1 = pressed). PS/2 mice also understand several commands for reset and self-test, switching between different operating modes, and changing the resolution of the reported motion vectors.
A
Microsoft IntelliMouse relies on an extension of the PS/2 protocol: the ImPS/2 or IMPS/2 protocol (the abbreviation combines the concepts of "IntelliMouse" and "PS/2"). It initially operates in standard PS/2 format, for backwards compatibility. After the host sends a special command sequence, it switches to an extended format in which a fourth byte carries information about wheel movements. The IntelliMouse Explorer works analogously, with the difference that its 4-byte packets also allow for two additional buttons (for a total of five).
[37]
Mouse vendors also use other extended formats, often without providing public documentation. The Typhoon mouse uses 6-byte packets which can appear as a sequence of two standard 3-byte packets, such that an ordinary PS/2
driver can handle them.
[38] For 3-D (or 6-degree-of-freedom) input, vendors have made many extensions both to the hardware and to software. In the late 1990s Logitech created ultrasound based tracking which gave 3D input to a few millimetres accuracy, which worked well as an input device but failed as a profitable product. In 2008, Motion4U introduced its "OptiBurst" system using IR tracking for use as a Maya (graphics software) plugin.
[edit]Apple Desktop Bus
In 1986
Apple first implemented the
Apple Desktop Bus allowing the daisy-chaining together of up to 16 devices, including arbitrarily many mice and other devices on the same bus with no configuration whatsoever. Featuring only a single data pin, the bus used a purely polled approach to computer/mouse communications and survived as the standard on mainstream models (including a number of non-Apple workstations) until 1998 when
iMac joined the industry-wide switch to using
USB. Beginning with the "Bronze Keyboard" PowerBook G3 in May 1999, Apple dropped the external ADB port in favor of USB, but retained an internal ADB connection in the
PowerBook G4 for communication with its built-in keyboard and trackpad until early 2005.
The industry-standard
USB (Universal Serial Bus) protocol and its connector have become widely used for mice; it is among the most popular types.
[39]
[edit]Cordless or wireless
A wireless mouse made for notebook computers
Cordless or wireless mice transmit data via
infrared radiation (see
IrDA) or
radio (including
Bluetooth). The receiver is connected to the computer through a serial or USB port, or can be built in (as is sometimes the case with Bluetooth). Modern non-Bluetooth wireless mice use USB receivers. Some of these can be stored inside the mouse for safe transport while not in use, while other, newer mice use newer "
nano" receivers, designed to be small enough to remain plugged into a laptop during transport, while still being large enough to easily remove.
[40]
[edit]Atari standard joystick connectivity
The
Amiga and the
Atari ST use an Atari standard
DE-9 connector for mice, the same connector that is used for
joysticks on the same computers and numerous 8-bit systems, such as the
Commodore 64 and the
Atari 2600. However, the signals used for mice are different from those used for joysticks. As a result, plugging a mouse into a joystick port causes the "joystick" to continuously move in some direction, even if the mouse stays still, whereas plugging a joystick into a mouse port causes the "mouse" to only be able to move a single pixel in each direction.
