Wednesday, March 19, 2014

MoGo - a mouse of credit card size

Now we have the ideal keyboard for Miix, what about the mouse? Although TouchMousePointer works like a charm and put the lack-of-mouse problem behind, there are still times a real mouse is much preferred like with any laptop. All mouses are bulky, you never want to carry one and what's the point to carry something that's thicker than your Miix?  But the MoGo mouse is exceptional, just a little thicker than a credit card so you can put it in your wallet. And it cost less than $20.


It works very well with Miix, except the scroll strip - totally erratic and useless. Fortunately, MouseImp solves the problem and it is free.


There is one more problem, charging. It is designed to be charged in a ExpressCard slot, therefore, I had to add a socket to it and make a small cable to charge it with USB:


I did not solder the socket to the connector pins, instead, I cut off a high temperature silicon strip from a $1 utensil, squeezed it into the female connector and secure the socket:


This way, I can easily remove the socket if one day I do need to put it into a laptop again. The cable is also straight forward to make. The 5V from USB works, but the light won't go off after fully charged. So I added two 1N4148 diodes, to drop the voltage down to 3.5V, then all became fine and the diodes protect the polarity too. I also noticed that now I don't have to turn the mouse on to charged it and charging is much quicker.


Nice, now I have a work horse running full Windows 8.1 with a real keyboard and mouse, all weigh a little more than 1 lb.

5 comments:

  1. I now use a Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse with my Asus T100. I recently found out there is a bluetooth version, the Arc Touch Mouse Surface edition. After months of research I believe this is the perfect bluetooth mouse for a windows tablet. You carry it while being flat and when needed you arc it and that's it, it turns on automatically. Rather expensive at 69.99 USD but well worth it in my opinion. And I think it's the only bluetooth mouse to take only two AAA bateeries instead of the bulkier AAs.

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    1. Yeah the Arc is extremely slim compared to all others but still no compare to the Mogo. If without the Mogo, especially for less than $20, I would certainly carry an Arc instead. For the same reason, I did not get a T100, it is slim compared to ultrabook craps, but still no compare to 8". If without 8" like this Miix, I would certainly carry a T100.

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  2. Can you explain further the pins and their purpose i dont have a computer with card slot

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    Replies
    1. You can search for ExpressCard interface to find out the layout of the pins.

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  3. Hi there. I am late to this conversation but i have 2 of these with PCMCIA not the express. im interested in building an adapter to connect the PCMCIA to micro usb. do yo uhave any tips?

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