The Idea

My Logitech G602 is messed up. It used to be able to go several months on one set of AA batteries, and my other G602, which is a year or two older, still can. One day, when the G602 had run out of batteries, I got annoyed. I went down to the basement, and instead of getting more batteries for it to gobble up, I grabbed the first wired mouse I could find. It was in the small box of electronics that had come with the house. Presumably, it was for the security camera system which no longer worked. When I started to use that cheap mouse, I began to wonder if it would be possible to remove the electronics from it and install them in some sort of a custom case to make a DIY mouse.

Building the Mouse

This was actually very simple. All I had to do for disassembly was remove some screws from the cheap mouse and it came apart nicely. After taking some measurements off of the original case, I grabbed a Cybertruck model from the internet and started modifying it to fit the electronics. Similarly to my BART train, I decided the best way to go was to make a baseplate for everything to attach to, and then have a decorative cover. It took a few revisions to make the baseplate fit the PCB just right, and hold the scroll wheel. Once the baseplate was printed, I printed the cover, the part that makes it look like a Cybertruck. This by far took the longest to print, so I was happy when it worked the first time, with only a little bit of filing down. To finish up, I had to print the click buttons. All these have to do is rest on top of the actual buttons on the PCB, so that when they are pressed down, the button gets pressed. I printed them upside down so that the side touching the print bed, which is the smoothest, would be facing up. Once again, these took a few revisions before they would work without hitting the scroll wheel. With the click buttons on, the mouse was done.

Cybermouse model files

Finishing touches

I designed it so that the wheels are part of the baseplate, and not the cover. This meant that by printing the baseplate in black and the cover in shiny grey, everything was already the right color and no painting was required. The only problem was the windows, which needed to be black. I fixed this by putting electrical tape on the side of the mouse and cutting around the window indentations, much like how I did the stipes on BART. While I originally intended to add some LEDs to the back to make the taillights light up, I decided not to after seeing how much the single led used for the optical part of the mouse shined through the gaps in the case. The case does have holes for the LEDs if I do ever decide to add them.

Using the Mouse

While I never intended to use the mouse daily, it kind of just ended up happening because I didn't want to deal with the G602, and didn't want to spend the money on a Glorious Model O. The mouse is surprisingly comfortable to use considering its shape. All of the features of the original mouse still work perfectly. The only annoying thing about it is that the click buttons occasionally fall into the mouse, but it's not too hard to fish them out. This could be fixed pretty easily by gluing a piece onto the cover that prevents them from moving side to side. The only other problem is that after about 6 months of use, the electrical tape on the right side fell off, but this was fixed pretty easily with a little bit of gorilla glue.