COMPUTER

MOUSE
 INTRODUCTION
In computing, a mouse (plural mice or mouses) functions as a pointing device by
detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a
mouse consists of a small case, held under one of the user's hands, with one or more
buttons. It sometimes features other elements, such as "wheels", which allow the
user to perform various system-dependent operations, or extra buttons or features
can add more control or dimensional input. The mouse's motion typically translates
into the motion of a pointer on a display.

Various Types of Mouses

EARLY MICE

The first computer mouse, held by inventor Douglas Engelbart, showing the wheels
that make contact with the working surface.
Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute invented the mouse in 1963
after extensive usability testing.

MECHANICAL MICE

Bill English, builder of Engelbart's original mouse, invented the so-called ball mouse
in 1972 while working for Xerox PARC. The ball-mouse replaced the external
wheels with a single ball that could rotate in any direction. It came as part of the
hardware package of the Xerox Alto computer.
The ball mouse utilizes two rollers rolling against two sides of the ball. One roller
detects the horizontal motion of the mouse and other the vertical motion. The
motion of these two rollers causes two disc-like encoder wheels to rotate,
interrupting optical beams to generate electrical signals. The mouse sends these
signals to the computer system by means of connecting wires. The driver software in
the system converts the signals into motion of the mouse pointer along X and Y axes
on the screen.

OPTICAL MICE
EARLY OPTICAL MICE
Early optical mice, circa 1980, came in two different varieties:
1. Some, such as those invented by Steve Kirsch of Mouse Systems Corporation,
used an infrared LED and a four-quadrant infrared sensor to detect grid
lines printed with infrared absorbing ink on a special metallic surface.
Predictive algorithms in the CPU of the mouse calculated the speed and
direction over the grid.
2. Others, invented by Richard F. Lyon and sold by Xerox, used a 16-pixel
visible-light image sensor with integrated motion detection on the same chip
and tracked the motion of light dots in a dark field of a printed paper or
similar mouse pad.
These two mouse types had very different behaviors, as the Kirsch mouse used an x-
y coordinate system embedded in the pad, and would not work correctly when the
pad was rotated, while the Lyon mouse used the x-y coordinate system of the mouse
body, as mechanical mice do.

MODERN OPTICAL MICE

Modern surface-independent optical mice work by using an optoelectronic sensor to
take successive pictures of the surface on which the mouse operates. As computing
power grew cheaper, it became possible to embed more powerful special-purpose
image-processing chips in the mouse itself. This advance enabled the mouse to detect
relative motion on a wide variety of surfaces, translating the movement of the mouse
into the movement of the pointer and eliminating the need for a special mouse-pad.
This advance paved the way for widespread adoption of optical mice. Optical mice
illuminate the surface that they track over, using an LED or a laser diode. Changes
between one frame and the next are processed by the image processing part of the
chip and translated into movement on the two axes using an optical flow estimation
algorithm. For example, the Avago Technologies ADNS-2610 optical mouse sensor
processes 1512 frames per second: each frame consisting of a rectangular array of
18×18 pixels, and each pixel can sense 64 different levels of gray.
LASER MICE
The laser mouse uses an infrared laser diode instead of an LED to illuminate the
surface beneath their sensor. As early as 1998, Sun Microsystems provided a laser
mouse with their Sun SPARCstation servers and workstations. However, laser mice
did not enter the mainstream market until 2004, when Logitech, in partnership with
Agilent Technologies, introduced its MX 1000 laser mouse. This mouse uses a small
infrared laser instead of an LED and has significantly increased the resolution of the
image taken by the mouse. The laser enables around 20 times more surface tracking
power to the surface features used for navigation compared to conventional optical
mice, via interference effects. While the implementation of a laser slightly increases
sensitivity and resolution, the main advantage comes from power usage.

Power-saving in optical mice

Manufacturers often engineer their optical mice — especially battery-powered
wireless models — to save power when possible. In order to do this, the mouse
blinks the laser or LED when in standby-mode (Each mouse has a different standby
time). This function may also increase the laser / LED life.

INERTIAL MICE
Inertial mice use a tuning fork or other accelerometer (US Patent 4787051) to detect
movement for every axis supported. Usually cordless, they often have a switch to
deactivate the movement circuitry between use, allowing the user freedom of
movement without affecting the pointer position. A patent for an inertial mouse
claims that such mice consume less power than optically based mice, and offer
increased sensitivity, reduced weight and increased ease-of-use.

3D MICE
Also known as flying mice, bats, or wands, these devices generally function through
ultrasound. Probably the best known example would be 3DConnexion/Logitech's
SpaceMouse from the early 1990s.
In the late 1990s Kantek introduced the 3D RingMouse. This wireless mouse was
worn on a ring around a finger, which enabled the thumb to access three buttons.
The mouse was tracked in three dimensions by a base station. Despite a certain
appeal, it was finally discontinued because it did not provide sufficient resolution.
A recent consumer 3D pointing device is the Wii Remote. While primarily a motion-
sensing device (that is, it can determine its orientation and direction of movement),
Wii Remote can also detect its spatial position by comparing the distance and
position of the lights from the IR emitter using its integrated IR camera (since the
nunchuk lacks a camera, it can only tell its current heading and orientation). The
obvious drawback to this approach is that it can only produce spatial coordinates
while its camera can see the sensor bar.
DOUBLE MOUSE

Double mouse allow for two mice to be used by both hands as input devices such as
when operating various graphics and multimedia applications.

APPLE DESKTOP BUS

Apple Macintosh Plus mice, 1986.

In 1986 Apple first implemented the Apple Desktop Bus allowing the daisy-chaining
together of up to 16 devices, including arbitrarily many mice and other devices on
the same bus with no configuration whatsoever. Featuring only a single data pin, the
bus used a purely polled approach to computer/mouse communications and
survived as the standard on mainstream models (including a number of non-Apple
workstations) until 1998 when iMac began the industry-wide switch to using USB.

TACTILE MICE
In 2000, Logitech introduced the "tactile mouse", which contained a small actuator
that made the mouse vibrate. Such a mouse can augment user-interfaces with haptic
feedback, such as giving feedback when crossing a window boundary.
Other unusual variants have included a mouse that a user holds freely in the hand,
rather than on a flat surface, and that detects six dimensions of motion (the three
spatial dimensions, plus rotation on three axes). Its vendor marketed it for business
presentations in which the speaker stands or walks around. So far, these mice have
not achieved widespread popularity.
 COMMON MOUSE OPERATIONS
Performing different operations on the mouse provide the activation of specific
actions on the interface, with different meanings. GUIs may define and trigger a
separate event for each gesture.

Low level gestures

• Click - pressing and releasing a button.
• Drag - pressing and holding a button, then moving the mouse without
releasing.
o (left) Single-click - clicking the main button.

o (left) Double-click - clicking the button two times in quick succession

counts as a different gesture than two separate single clicks.
o (left) Triple-click - clicking the button three times in quick succession.

o Right-click - clicking the secondary button.

• Button chording (a.k.a. Rocker navigation).

o Combination of right-click then left-click.

o Combination of left-click then right-click or keyboard letter.

o Combination of left or right-click and the mouse wheel.

• Clicking with a modifier key.

Standard semantic gestures

• Rollover
• Selection
• Menu traversal
• Drag and drop
• Pointing
• Goal crossing
 MOUSE SPEED
The computer industry often measures mouse sensitivity in terms of counts per inch
(CPI), commonly expressed less correctly as dots per inch (DPI) — the number of
steps the mouse will report when it moves one inch. In early mice, this specification
was called pulses per inch (ppi). If the default mouse-tracking condition involves
moving the pointer by one screen-pixel or dot on-screen per reported step, then the
CPI does equate to DPI: dots of pointer motion per inch of mouse motion. The CPI
or DPI as reported by manufacturers depends on how they make the mouse; the
higher the CPI, the faster the pointer moves with mouse movement. However,
software can adjust the mouse sensitivity, making the cursor move faster or slower
than its DPI. Current software can change the speed of the pointer dynamically,
taking into account the mouse's absolute speed and the movement from the last
stop-point. Different software may name the settings "acceleration" or "speed" —
referring respectively to "threshold" and "pointer precision".
For simple software, when the mouse starts to move, the software will count the
number of "counts" received from the mouse and will move the pointer across the
screen by that number of pixels (or multiplied by a factor f1=1,2,3). So, the pointer
will move slowly on the screen, having a good precision. When the movement of the
mouse reaches the value set for "threshold", the software will start to move the
pointer more quickly; thus for each number n of counts received from the mouse,
the pointer may move (f2 x n) pixels, where f2=2,3...10. Usually, the user can set the
value of f2 by changing the "acceleration" setting.
Operating systems sometimes apply acceleration, referred to as "ballistics", to the
motion reported by the mouse. For example, versions of Windows prior to Windows
XP doubled reported values above a configurable threshold, and then optionally
doubled them again above a second configurable threshold. These doublings applied
separately in the X and Y directions, resulting in very nonlinear response. For
example one can see how the things work in Microsoft Windows NT. Starting with
Windows XP OS version of Microsoft and many OS versions for Apple Macintosh,
computers use a smoother ballistics calculation that compensates for screen-
resolution and has better linearity.