Mouse Hacked to Run On Rechargeable Cellphone Battery

Your mouse will run out of juice just as you are up against a deadline. But what if you could just attach a pair of jumper leads and get the dead rodent running again? And what if you got rid of the AAs altogether and swapped in a long-lasting lithium-ion battery instead?

This is exactly what Davetech did over at Instructables. Using nothing but a trusty Dremel, an old cellphone battery, a card reader and a cheap-o ($1.50) li-ion battery charger from Ebay, he fashioned a clever rechargeable mouse. Oh, and you’ll need pair of jumper cables, too, if you want to follow along at home.

The Dremel was used to hollow out the old battery compartment and make room for the new Nokia cell. The card-reader was cannibalized for its sprung contacts, with all but two of these bent out of the way. To begin with, Davetech would just swap in a new, freshly charged cell and pop the old one into his phone to recharge, but even these few seconds were too much.

To allow in-mouse charging, Davetech ordered the charger from Hong Kong and now simply runs a pair of cables from its terminals into the mouse and onto the battery’s own contacts.