With the advent of new technologies in wireless communication, many wired devices are transformed into wireless ones. Among those wireless devices, wireless keyboard and mouse are being widely used.
The mechanism of wireless keyboards and mice is not as complicated as you think. It just involves the basic concept of wireless technology, that is, some data is transmitted from a device in the air and the same data is retrieved by another device. Wireless keyboards and wireless mice are portable and it is very useful, especially if you have to give some powerpoint presentations in your office. We don’t even have to compromise on its efficiency. These devices are very compatible and its working is very precise. The wireless keyboard and mouse uses rechargeable batteries for its working. Let’s start with the working of these wireless devices.
Working of a Wireless Keyboard
The working of a wireless keyboard is very simple. If you take the case of wired keyboards, the keyboard is directly connected to the computer, and the computer receives the signal from the keyboard through cable. But what happens in the case of wireless keyboards? The medium of transmission of signals is through, infrared, or radio frequencies (RF).
The basic thing to be understood here is that, the data from a keyboard (transmitter) is transmitted to the computer through USB (Universal Serial Bus), which acts as a receiver and receives the signals from the keyboard. The wireless keyboard also works with Bluetooth technology that has a wider range than infrared. Infrared keyboards, do not have a wide range, and it works in the line of sight of the computer. This means that, infrared keyboards cannot be used away from the computer.
There is an Integrated Circuit (IC) chip in the computer, that receives all the information that comes from the keyboard and transfers it to the Operating System (OS) of the computer. The encoded data from the keyboard is processed and decoded in the CPU (Central Processing Unit) and it is displayed in the monitor of the computer. Each letter in the keyboard has a code. For example, the code for T is U+0054.
Types of Wireless Keyboards
Optical Keyboard
Optical keyboard works with two main components – light emitting diodes (LED) and photo sensors. These two components are embedded in the Printed Circuit Board (PCB). LEDs work using the principle of ‘electro luminescence’ and photoelectric sensors ‘detect the light rays’ from any device. The horizontal and vertical light beams are emitted from the LEDs and received by the sensors. These light beams are blocked by the prompted key in the keyboard and thus the particular key is identified.
Laser Keyboard
The image of the keys in the laser keyboard is projected or displayed on a flat surface. But how is it done? The movement of a user’s fingers on the keyboard is monitored by the complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) which are power saving semiconductors or Virtual Interface Processing CoreTM which is an infrared sensor. The virtual interface processing core is a sensor chip that examines the location of the actuated key. The image of the key is displayed using a red diode laser on the projector (screen) and the image is enlarged using diffractive optical elements.
Working of a Wireless Mouse
Just like any wireless device, wireless mouse has two basic main components – transmitter and receiver. RF wireless mouse and Bluetooth wireless mouse works same like the wireless keyboards. The other components of a wireless mouse are mouse controller, ceramic capacitors, 26.690 MHz crystal for transmission. The mouse has a standby mode and it transmits only when you are doing an action, example, clicking. The computer has a printed circuit which has all data of the mouse.
Types of Wireless Mice
Optical Mouse
The essential components of an optical mouse are light emitter (LED lights) and light sensors (CMOS sensor). Red light which is emitted from the red LED is used to track the movements of the mouse. The CMOS sensor is used to capture the image of the mouse movements. After capturing, it sends each image to a Digital Signal Processor (DSP). The DSP analyzes the pattern of each image that has been sent by the CMOS and examines how these images have changed, comparing to the previous image.
The pattern of mouse movements are marked on the coordinate axes. The monitoring of the mouse movements and capturing the images are done very precisely, thereby providing a smooth movement of the cursor on the screen. Dots Per Inch (DPI) technology is used to give a fine resolution to the image, just like megapixels in mobile phones. Optical mouse uses 400 to 800 DPI for image resolution.
Laser Mouse
The working of laser mouse is almost same as that of an optical mouse with few differences. The laser mouse has more resolution (2000 DPI) as compared to optical mouse and laser mouse uses invisible laser rays to detect the movements of the mouse.
Wireless keyboards and mice are important input components of a computer. So, it is necessary to know the best wireless keyboard and mouse available in the market that will be suitable for your computer. Buy the best one and enjoy working with it!