I searched the forum to see if someone has suggested this, but couldn’t find anything.
I want to modify my computer mouse to generate enough power to light up an LED implant in the hand.
First question: is that feasible?
More questions: what do I need to do that? I have had no training in electronics, I don’t even have a solder, but I’m willing to learn. I feel this should be an easy/small project to start. Anyone knows what I should do to get my mouse light up implants?
That should be possible I think, you’ll need a reader with a wire antenna (not on the PCB) that you could glue to the inside casing of the mouse. You’d probably want to find a continuously powered reader so the led doesn’t flash, then you can attach it to the power coming from the USB cable. Maybe even add a small USB hub so you can get input from the reader too
Where is the implant, and is it hf or lf?
Does anyone know if it’s possible to use an antenna from a dissolved card soldered in place of a PCB antenna?
Thanks for the reply. I don’t have an LED implant yet. I was thinking to get one after I figured out how to power it without a phone. I was thinking about flexnext at first, but any of those colorful ones is cool too.
An antenna is an antenna. The tuning might be different though. In its simplest form an antenna is just a certain length of wire. You wouldn’t necessarily need to use a reader, you just need to generate the right frequency of radio waves. But perhaps building something like that from scratch is not ideal for a beginner.
Thanks pac, this project came to my mind when I was reading that thread. The problem that I’m trying to solve with mouse is to use its power source to power up LEDs. I thought this would make it simpler than a standalone bracelet.
LF is 125 KHz while HF is 13.56 MHz.
And never am I called Kenneth. 
(rewritten to avoid the other obvious dad joke)
Just in case you weren’t aware the flexnext isn’t a thing any more, at least as it was… it may be reinvented later but it’s fairly dead at the moment
Actually I was confused about that since I had seen it on DT website, but didn’t pay attention to the footnote saying it’s being re-engineered. Thanks for clearing that up for me!
So I found this one that’s supposed to have an antenna in itself and generates 125 khz frequency. Do I just heed to find a way to bring power to it from mouse? That’s it?
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Melexis/MLX90109CDC-AAA-000-TU?qs=KuGPmAKtFKVi%2FHK5ragtcA%3D%3D
That chip still requires an antenna (Lant and Cant on the diagram) but otherwise it should just need power. The datasheet suggests that it can read at a distance of 15cm with a 130mm coil (that is probably not going to fit in your mouse.) But they do mention an 18mm coil available on an evaluation board as well.
This would only work for LF chips, not HF (NFC) ones.
A thought I had: Does it need to be in your mouse specifically? Can it be mounted under the desk/mousepad/elsewhere and achieve the same effect? This would alleviate the problem of trying to jam a bunch of extra electronics inside your mouse.
The circuit in the first post of the power bracelet thread works great with 5V power (what the mouse is getting from the USB cable). Let me know if you want any help (especially with the antenna coil).
I’m sure you’ll need to cut away some plastic to make room inside, but yeah it could fit. It would be much easier to fit with surface mount parts, but that would require a custom PCB. With through-hole parts you’ll need to be pretty efficient with the placement.