this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
481 points (95.3% liked)
Technology
59693 readers
4413 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I didn't know it was a capacitor. I thought it was bent springs. I managed to fix one once by opening up the switches and bending the springs back, but it went back to double clicking within a month, and the process was not easy. I've got huge hands, and those switches are tiny.
The actual difference between a working new mouse and a failing double click mouse is in the button itself (mechanical parts are almost always the problem).
However, it is not some exotic failure mode. All mechanical switches have a "bounce", where the contact makes and breaks a few times before settling into the connected position. Switches are typically designed to make the actual contact spring loaded (which is the origin of the click sound you here). As they age, this mechanism degrades, making the bouncing problem worse.
However, this is a well understood problem that any electrical engineer should be familiar with. One solution is to install a filter capacitor. Now it takes longer to switch between the on and off state, so the inherent bounce in the switch is smoothed out to the point where you cannot detect it.
They probably did testing with a new switch, and decided that they didn't need to include any explicit debounce component, ignoring the fact that the switch would degrade over its lifetime.
So, the capacitor can mitigate the spring weakening. Good to know. Replacing a cap is probably much easier than taking the switches apart and bending the springs.