zero friction mice

[isp]

[FoxWolf1]

So it's a mouse on ball bearings. This isn't a new idea:

I had a mouse with ball bearings once: the R2 Omnimouse. Those certainly weren't "zero friction", and I highly doubt these will be either, especially when dirt and deformation of the mouse under hand pressure are taken into account.

And even if it is "zero friction", is that even a good thing? What about control?

And even if it is a good thing, is it good enough to offset the increase in mouse weight?

Also, just thought I'd mention, according to an ESReality thread, the guy who did this conversion wants $450 for a kit. Not a chance.

[chel-]

Saw this on two other forums already. While I think its great that someone is trying to do something different I'd much rather have less friction between my forearm and the mousepad

[tp4tissue]

a true frictionless mouse would be mind control mouse. The current iterations work like crap, but here's hoping.

[TotalChaos]

I am interested in a Zero impact mouse and a zero impact keyboard.

I have wanted a zero impact mouse and keyboard for many years but never found one.  I would even settle for really really really low but not quite zero impact

[xsphat]

a true frictionless mouse would be mind control mouse. The current iterations work like crap, but here's hoping.

Actually, anything that truly is frictionless couldn't be moved at all.

[orenbeck]

Well- we "Could" do tech like an Air Hockey mousing surface.

Or the reverse and have "HoverMaus" of some sort.

Obscure to some - A very small Bergenholm...would make mouse movement interesting.

Seriously though, There's a point of diminishing return in frictional hacks as the human factors tend to swamp the incremental reductions.

Slicing the mass to irreducible eggshell designs with a glass surface having the puck in hand as only reflector might be worth hacking up as a concept proof. Kinect and a glass tabletop  being the last resort first prototype, even accepting that point cloud will be cruddy at best.

Envision a carbon shell with flaps to unshroud reflective bits.

Who will hack one first?

[TotalChaos]

a true frictionless mouse would be mind control mouse. The current iterations work like crap, but here's hoping.

Actually, anything that truly is frictionless couldn't be moved at all.

Just the opposite.

Anything truly frictionless could never be stopped from moving.

[Vintage]

a true frictionless mouse would be mind control mouse. The current iterations work like crap, but here's hoping.

Actually, anything that truly is frictionless couldn't be moved at all.

Just the opposite.

Anything truly frictionless could never be stopped from moving.

Even if the mouse had no friction it would still stop moving eventually,due to air resistance and other form of force exerted on the mouse, unless you use it in a vacuum or something.

I feel that there is a balance needed between speed and control. High-quality PTFE is generally pretty good, especially for light mice.

[bavman]

a true frictionless mouse would be mind control mouse. The current iterations work like crap, but here's hoping.

Actually, anything that truly is frictionless couldn't be moved at all.

Just the opposite.

Anything truly frictionless could never be stopped from moving.

Even if the mouse had no friction it would still stop moving eventually,due to air resistance and other form of force exerted on the mouse, unless you use it in a vacuum or something.

I feel that there is a balance needed between speed and control. High-quality PTFE is generally pretty good, especially for light mice.

But if you nudged it a little it would at least glide for a while making it a non-ideal mouse.

[davkol]

a true frictionless mouse would be mind control mouse. The current iterations work like crap, but here's hoping.

Actually, anything that truly is frictionless couldn't be moved at all.

Just the opposite.

Anything truly frictionless could never be stopped from moving.

That works only for spherical cows in vacuum, but this sort of stuff is probably considered cruelty to animals, and hence is illegal.

[dorkvader]

a true frictionless mouse would be mind control mouse. The current iterations work like crap, but here's hoping.

Actually, anything that truly is frictionless couldn't be moved at all.

Just the opposite.

Anything truly frictionless could never be stopped from moving.

Also wrong: You just have to apply force in the opposite direction of motion to decelerate it. Once could also say that it'd only stop moving at absolute zero (Due to the atoms vibrating). You also run into issues with any metal parts reacting magnetically to the earth's field, (causing lorentz stuff to occur)etc.

You can write the differential equation of a spring-force system without a "dashpot" (Or constant resistance to motion, like friction here) and still cause it to come to a rest (instead of oscillating indefinitely) if you apply forces to it. You can even calculate which force and where. This is a simplified system, but the same physical Principles apply here.
---
On topic: Here, I suspect they know it's not truly frictionless (I mean, it's not a superfluid or anything: Which has no viscosity and a bunch of crazy other affects. Lookup Quark-Gluon plasma on the wikipeida) but are using the term like some sort of marketing. It certainly should (depending on implementation) have much less rolling resistance than a normal mouse would have friction. I'd also advocate a hard mousepad for this one.

[lazerpointer]

On a serious note, and in an attempt to avoid all the nerdy technicalities of the word "frictionless" I would really love to see something even silkier than the current standard of mouse feet (polyethelene / teflon mouse feet)

I have considered the air-hockey scenario. The only problem would be that when you have your mouse idle, it will drift.. A solution would be to program the device (maybe the air shuts off when hand not touching mouse?) but that involves coding and ultimately it will be hecka expensive. That being said.... I would dish out a good 300 bucks if I could get my hands on something like this.

On a side note;
Has anybody considered making a thumb-tenkey sort of addon for mice? Like the tenkey from the Razer naga, standalone with a USB plug. That way we could like attach it to mice and wouldn't have to use the Naga's twin-eye sensor. It would be awesome if I had the technical prowess to just take out the tenkey from one of my Nagas but something tells me if you break one part of the PCB off, the whole thing would just be dead.

[hashbaz]

A large proportion of my mouse use could be eliminated if I could look at a location on-screen and blink to click, or something similar.  I'm at a good local minimum now with a Rollermouse, but it would be great to do button pushes and window switching without using my hands at all.

[davkol]

A large proportion of my mouse use could be eliminated if I could look at a location on-screen and blink to click, or something similar.  I'm at a good local minimum now with a Rollermouse, but it would be great to do button pushes and window switching without using my hands at all.

I think this is possible with eye tracking. However, it works only with large screens, and precision sucks.

[Saturn]

a true frictionless mouse would be mind control mouse. The current iterations work like crap, but here's hoping.

It'd be neat as hell and great from a productivity standpoint, as well as going a long way towards eliminating most of our sources of RSI.

But man, it would kill gaming.

[CreamyNutButter]

Zero friction?  Aside from being theoretically impossible due to the laws of physics, it would fall off the desk!

[1839cc]

Has there been a maglev mouse yet?