After having spent months with several of my projects on pause it feels great to just get a small one out. My brother's gaming mouse recently started clicking twice sometimes when he right-clicked. Very likely this was a faulty switch and I saw the opportunity to dust off my soldering iron and attempt to fix it. After opening the mouse up and cleaning it (the interior was quite disgusting) with 100% isopropyl alcohol and soapy water, I could verify the switch type and order some replacements.

The replacements arrived today and I started de-soldering the existing switch. This proved harder than I expected. Partly because I was rusty at handling the iron and had bad technique; but partly I think my soldering iron is also pretty shit. After a bit I got the switch off and I could solder on a new one.

Soldering a new one was pretty straightforward. One of the holes for the pins on the switch did have solder inside of it, but that was solved by heating it up from one side and pushing the switch in from the other. Then I just soldered the other pins and put it back together.

Overall it was a really fun little project that I could do in an afternoon. I helped reduce some e-waste and practice my soldering a little bit. From some initial testing it all seems to work really well. Tonight I am gonna give it back to my brother and he'll be the one to determine if I actually managed to fix it.