The new laser mouse, featuring a built-in laser diode (LD), uses Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) as its light source, which is one kind of the coherent light. 

According to Tony Yang, spokesman of AOpen, when the laser light illuminates on the working surface, the surface will reflect and diffuse the incident light and generate speckle pattern.  The imaging sensor in the laser mouse chip detects the speckle pattern generated from the working surface if the surface is not perfect smooth. 

The laser mouse can work on more surfaces as compared with traditional optical mouse, which operates poorly on certain types of surfaces such as glossy surface, glass plate, transparent folder, yellow folder, magazine cover, photo paper, pure white, skin color, red paper and black paper surfaces.  AOpen’s new laser mouse can operate smoothly on all the above-mentioned surfaces.

Driven by a single 5V power supply, the mouse is tested to have been built with the best precise motion estimation technology, according to Tony Yang.

The operating current for the laser mouse is less than 15 mA while the mouse is in motion and 80uA at power down mode.  Other specifications of the mouse are: system clock, 27 MHz; wave length, 850 nm; speed, 28+ inches/sec.; acceleration, 20g; resolution, 800/1600 cpi; frame rate, 6700 frames/sec.