I have had the Logitech MX Revolution Mouse for a few years and I really enjoy using it. It is different from the Apple Magic Mouse that it has more buttons to compensate for the lack of gesture. It is a great mouse and it is rechargeable. But that is where the problem is for this mouse. When the battery stops charging, what would you do?
When the mouse cannot be charged anymore, the battery indicator will blink red when you put it into the charging cradle that came with the mouse. Even if you leave the mouse in the cradle for over night, there won’t be any charge retained by the battery inside the mouse. I think there are at least two logical solutions:
- Replace the mouse
- Replace the battery
Replacing the mouse is too easy of a solution, I will leave that to the those who got too much money :P
Replacing the battery is possible. As described by this thread, you can open the mouse by unscrewing a few screws hidden behind the plastic feet. There appear to be two variants for the battery used in the MX Revolution mouse, one that has a cord that you have to solder to the logic board, another that pops right in. The replacement battery can be had for as little as US$7.77 plus shipping and handling on ebay. Not bad of a solution, but having to wait for the battery to arrive in the mail = no mouse to use for a couple of weeks is not that attractive to me.
So here comes the third option, fix the problem!
After searching online a little bit more, it appears that the charging station is responsible for the problem. The mouse is rated at 4.1V 800mA (~3.3W), the charging station is rated at 8.0V 500mA (4W). As explained by this article written by Cooper Bills, the difference in power between the cradle and the mouse battery is sufficient to cause the battery to stop charging after a while. By limiting the power applied to charge the battery, the battery will charge again.
I went to get some resistors from Circuit City and spent about 30 minutes soldering the resistors onto the cradle per the instructions of Cooper Bills, now my MX Revolution mouse can be recharged again! Total cost? $6 for a 40 resistor pack that I needed only 2 resistors from. Thanks Cooper Bills for the great instructions and the knowledge to fix the problem.
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tim ferriss
[...] busy lately geeking out at home. First got my Logitech MX Revolution mouse charging problem fixed. And now I have been playing around with Ubuntu for a few days, trying to run it on the Acer [...]
Ha. Thanks for the tip. I’m using the MX also and I’m on my second one.