# best optical mouse surface?



## cutcopypaste

What is really the best surface for an optical mouse? And please let's not talk commercially available mouse pads.. let's talk things you find around your house.
I have seen so much conflicting information.. some people say white is good, some people say go black... some people say just use a white piece of letter paper, and many people respond that it doesn't work.

I had a lightly finished solid oak desk and the mouse worked beautifully right on it.. it was like a dream! hehe. But for space/shape reasons (unfortunately as beautiful as that wood was in the desk, everything else about it was pretty bad), I've moved to a particle laminate reddy brown dealie and the mouse goes nuts on it. I think maybe it's something to do with the roughness of the surface and the slight reflectivity could be confusing it?


----------



## Elvandil

Whatever is the most comfortable for you. All I ask in mouse pads is that the mouse move smoothly and that the surface not be too rough so as not to wear the bottom of the mouse and cause random reflections. A place mat works well. Color is irrelevant for most of them.


----------



## darkwade

If your like me and don't have a desk or are to cheep to buy a pad go with a black pillow, the flat ones that you don't want to sleep on any more work the best use a $3 pill free pillow case.


----------



## Courtneyc

Go to a school, an adult computer training center, or a mom and pop computer store. They usually have old dirty sponge-backed mouse pads that they would probably give you for free. 

Wash them in the top rack of the dishwasher, face down. Make sure the heat cycle is not enabled.

Courtney


----------



## cutcopypaste

there's gotta be something just lying around the house that'll work well? would cardstock or bristol board work well do you think?


----------



## darkwade

glue a black tee shirt over a cardboard square.
maby a piece of real wood


----------



## Gulo Luseus

For an optical mouse, best surface is something not too shiny (glass is bad), with a pattern or goo dtexture. The mouse woeks by "seeing" things go past ( that is a gross simplivication) so if its shiny or no pattern, its got nothing to pck up on.
For a good mat, an old piece of wood, old wallpaper ( flat, not raised), newspaper ( I used it for a while, it was great, but the print does come off on the mouse and hand after a while), or if you have an old A4 folder, chop it in half and use that.
Pretty much anything non reflective, with a pattern or texture will do it. Have a look round, experiment! Some of the best mats are the ones no one uses!


----------



## Elvandil

Actually, reflection is exactly what you want from a mouse surface since it is the reflected light from the surface that is captured by the CMOS sensor to be sent to a digital image processor that then compares the image seen at one point to a later image to see how far features in the 2 images have moved apart. On average, it takes 1500 "snapshots" per second.

But not too reflective. The surface needs to have variable "features" that can be compared. A glass surface is almost too perfect and therefore almost featureless. It is also too shiny, bouncing light all over the place and distorting the image. Cloth is perfect. But almost any surface will work, as you may have discovered.


----------

