Microsoft recently put up a teaser marketing claim "Say Goodbye to Laser" on their PC hardware website. Soon enough, geeks around the world started digging, and they found out that in fact Microsoft was about to release a new wireless Blue LED Mouse on 09.09.2008.
However, little was known how this "Blue LED" suppose to work and why it would be "Say Goodbye to Laser". Although speculations claim that the new system ("a little blue H.A.L. with wide angle sensor") is suppose to work on more surfaces than laser, which is the exact reason that Laser tracking is becoming a popular trend in PC mouse applications, it is yet to be proven.With some knowledge in wireless PC peripheral applications, I started digging online to search this mouse's BOM and systems. With a little bit luck, I was able to find out the following:
- This mouse will be called "Microsoft Explorer Mini Mouse", Model Number 1363;
- This is a 2.4GHz wireless mouse. The RF radio comes from Nordic Semiconductor's nRF24L01;
- The entire system will be assembled at a Taiwanese PC peripheral ODM (original design manufacturer) called KYE;
- The Blue LED is a standard LED product from Rohm;
- Most importantly, the LED sensor came from Infineon! The Marketing Part Number (MPN) is UAB-M9659-OLQFN-76-1, but I could not find any information about this part. This must be a custom job done by Infineon for Microsoft;
- Of course, Microsoft made own firmware.
A little bit strange though, I did not find what microcontroller (MCU) was used to control the mouse. Nordic's nRF24L01 is only a 2.4GHz RF transceiver, and it does not has an integrated MCU, unless it is integrated in the Infineon optical sensor.
So that's about it so far, I hope this is a bit helpful to some geeky engineers who would like to find out the details of this product. More to come if I have more information. Otherwise, we will have to wait until 9/9/2008 and disassemble a brand new mouse to find out Microsoft's secret!
