Extend Wireless Mouse Battery Life: DIY 14500 Lithium Mod
If you feel like wireless mice drain batteries too quickly, always running out of power when you're in the middle of enjoying your computer, you can switch the mouse to be powered by a 14500 lithium battery. You just need to replace the existing batteries with two of these, and you'll never have to worry about not finding AA batteries again.
The plan only requires 6 components: TPS62201, two 10µF ceramic capacitors, a 10µH power inductor, BRCL3230ME lithium battery protection circuit, and a 2.4V voltage regulator diode.
Considering the significant damage from over-discharging lithium batteries, a protective scheme is needed. Reverse-connecting the Blue Arrow's 2-in-1 lithium battery protection BRCL3230ME and 2.4V voltage regulator diode can raise the original 2.4V over-discharge protection voltage to around 3V, reducing battery losses and extending lifespan. (After adding the voltage regulator diode, not only over-discharge protection is improved, but over-charge protection is also increased, so adding a BRCL3230ME before it is necessary, unless a dedicated charger is available.)
Here are the modification steps:
1. Purchase the required components.
2. Refer to resources, create a wiring diagram for reference during soldering. (The voltage regulator diode needs to be reverse-connected here.)
3. Solder the components.
4. Trim the connections.
5. Conduct a hardware test to ensure success.
6. Summarize
TPS62201 efficiency and load current official curve graph:
Through actual testing, the entire scheme results in a static current of around 20μA. With an input voltage of 4.2V, the measured current at the input terminal during mouse operation is 5mA, and it's 0.1mA during standby. Before the LDO, I also tried using XC6206. With the same mouse, the operating current was 23mA, and the standby current was 0.25mA. Then, using the same fully charged 4.2V battery, I compared the XC6206 and TPS62201 schemes for 10 days. After 10 days, the voltages measured were 3.737 and 4.038 respectively. This clearly shows that XC6206's efficiency is not as high as TPS62201's.
