How to recycle / reuse laptops touchpad
If you have a broken laptop computer you probably want to scavenge it for the working parts. One of the cooler pieces is touchpad which you can then use in your RaspberryPI/Arduino project or as an nice add on to your keyboard.
What will you need:
- touchpad
- male PS/2 connector (you can get this from any PS/2 keyboard or mouse)
- multimeter
- soldering iron
- electrical tape
- sharp knife / razor blade
First you have to remove trackpad from your laptop. That should not be a problem because there is nothing to break if it’s not working anyway. While disassembeling try to keep connecting wires intact as much as possible because you’ll need them for soldering to PS/2 cable.
For the PS/2 cable you cut it from the keyboard or a mouse and find out the pinout before connecting to the trackpad.
Source: wikipedia
Upper image is a female connector so for your male connector cable you have to look at it symmetrically.
The pinout is as follows (number represents the pin on the female plug):
- Data
- Not connected
- Ground
- +5V DC
- Clock
- Not connected
As you see there are 4 out of 6 wires used. Out of those 4 wires 2 are for power e.g. ground and +5V DC. You have to figure out which is which on the board. This link may be of help for the pinout. Usualy there is not much difference between different touchpads so the white flat cable going from touchpad to the circuit is probably built like this:
pin 5/6 = Ground
pin 7/8 = CLK
pin 9/10 = DATA
pin 11/12 = +5V
<– from this white flat cable you get the info about pinout.
With information from the board and the white flat cable pinout I figured out what was Ground and +5V. Data and clock connections i tested out with trial and error procedure (don’t worry there are only 2 possible permutations 
And here is the end result:
Ugly? I know but it works 😛
If you have any questions about the procedure dont hesitate to ask in the comment section below. The mouse is also usable as a USB mouse with the PS/2 to usb adapter.
igcek out
nice article will share it.
please do
well a good place to recycle old computer assets and laptops is readingcomputerrecycling.co.uk