[juskim] wanted to build a tiny mouse, but it couldn’t just be any mouse. It had to be a high-tech gaming mouse that could compete with the best on raw performance. The results are impressive, even if the final build is perhaps less than ideal for pro-level gameplay.
The build riffs on an earlier build from [juskim] that used little more than a PCB and a 3D-printed housing to make a barebones skeleton mouse. However, this one ups the sophistication level. At the heart of the build is the nRF54L15 microcontroller, which is paired with a PAW3395 mouse sensor which is commonly used in high-end gaming mice. It offers resolution up to 26K DPI for accurate tracking, speeds up to 650 ips, and 8 kHz sampling rates. Long story short, if you want fine twitch control, this is the sensor you’re looking for. The sensor and microcontroller are laced together on a custom PCB with a couple of buttons, a battery, and a charging circuit, and installed in a barebones 3D-printed housing to make the final build as small as possible.
The only real thing letting the design down is the mouse’s key feature—the size. There’s very little body to grab on to and it’s hard to imagine being able to play most fast-paced games at a high level with such a tiny device. Nevertheless, the specs are hardcore and capable, even if the enclosure isn’t.
[juskim] loves building tiny peripherals; we’ve featured his fine work before, too. Video after the break.
I would love to buy this as a module, and print a mouse shell around it.
Username checks out.
So all these crazy specs, and then push it through a bluetooth connection … whats the spec and delta here?
exactly what i was thinking. Crazy specs, strangled by a bottleneck of bandwidth and latency.
What is total latency? I assume the latency of the wireless connection is much greater than the polling period of 250µs.
Instead of polling we should make an PCI mouse that instantly reports it’s result.
That is correct. The nRF54L offers the Bluetooth Low-Latency Packet Mode (LLPM). It has a one way latency of around 1ms.
More info here: https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ncs-latest/page/nrf/samples/bluetooth/llpm/README.html
Average latency is ~0.5 ms (from click signal to nRF54 to PC mouse movement/click). The nRF54 is using Nordic’s ESB wireless protocol and it’s able to achieve ~200 us per packet sent to the RX end which is currently a Teensy with nRF24L.
wireless = latency
That’s a neat project. I would just suggest caution in using tools that reduce your movements more because of the chance of developing repetitive strain injury. I deal with this now after a career of 30 years doing CAD.
Yep. The main driver of mouse form factor is ergonomics, not the size of the electronics. This is pretty obvious if you take apart a mouse.
are there any plans to open source it? looks like a neat project