Gadget Industry Hid a Working PC Inside a Computer Mouse

A regular-looking mouse sits on a desk, clicks as expected, and still moves a cursor. Same object also boots a desktop on a monitor and plays Minecraft. That collision of jobs is the whole point of YouTuber Gadget Industry’s latest build: a Samsung phone’s computer stuffed into a pointing device that never stopped being a pointing device.

Samsung DeX is the secret sauce that enables this project to work. Compatible Galaxy phones can essentially transform your phone into a little Windows machine via the USB-C connector, complete with a full taskbar, resizable apps, and mouse control, as long as you connect a display to the port. The Gadget Industry, on the other hand, decided to remove all of the non-essentials, leaving only the meat of the phone: the core logic board with processor, memory, and storage, all connected to the radio bits, and the tiny daughterboard that houses the USB-C jack, as well as the cameras and unnecessary bulk removed at the bolt.

There isn’t much space inside a mouse to play with, so the original phone battery just wouldn’t fit. So they had to get their hands filthy by splicing the ribbon connector from the old battery to a much smaller cell and then soldering it together. The new battery pack is just big enough to get the board to boot. As it turns out, once DEX is up and running, power flows in over the same USB-C line that supplies the monitor, so the thing can run as long as the wire is connected. The mouse electronics require a precise 1.5 volts, so a tiny little buck converter was added to take the phone board’s supply and dial it back a notch, allowing the sensors and other bits to function without relying on those old AA cells. To make room, they had to hack out the plastic battery posts inside the shell.

Not only did power need to be trimmed down, but so did the wiring. So they removed all of the bulky original connectors off the boards and replaced them with ultra thin copper wire sourced from vintage headphones. They even had to create a bendable USB-C extension so that the cord could reach the front of the mouse without getting in the way. With the phone’s power button no longer on the phone, they had to replace several micro switches with a new button.

Heat was the one factor that nearly ruined the project completely. A phone board is built to withstand all of the heat it generates, but if it’s placed in plastic, it will overheat. So Gadget Industry had to go and cut some sheet brass, solder it in, and then go crazy cleaning the outside. Then they used thermal paste to wedge a specific inner plate in there, allowing brass to transfer heat to the shell you rest your palm on. It’s plenty to keep things cool while running 4K video, doing light multitasking, or playing Minecraft, but it gets warm enough to remind you that there’s still a phone chip in there with nowhere to hide.

Don’t bother attempting to type on it; you’ll still need a separate keyboard. Storage is whatever your original donor phone had, and the wireless on the board works fine, but the antenna design is a little goofy, so don’t expect long range. Shutting it down? There’s only a switch on the side and no fancy on-screen menu, but despite all of that, it’s a really humorous little hack: you’re manipulating the item that’s actually rendering the desktop you’re viewing.
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