--- title: "Heated Trackball" date: 2014-12-22T14:34:34+02:00 draft: false type: post url: /heated-trackball/ tags: - Hardware - Trackball --- ## Parts needed * Heating wire (0,2mm 43,95 Ohm/m Kanthal D) * some regular wire * glue * soldering equipment Since the USB port should ghive us 500mAh and the trackball shouldn't consume more than 150mAh, the wire might consume 350mAh. Knowing the voltage of 5V and the desired power consumption, it is easy to calculate the needed resistor: ![image](/img/resistance.png) The heating wire has a resistance of 43,95 Ohm per meter, the wire needs to be 33cm long in order to consume 350mAh: Icalculation of the wire length /pics/length.png ## Assembly Glueing the wire to the inner side of the housing: ![image](/img/trackball1.jpg) After reassembling the mouse buttons: ![image](/img/trackball2.jpg) The finished trackball: ![image](/img/trackball3.jpg) ![image](/img/trackball4.jpg)