Parts List

I wanted to accomplish my goal and keep it as simple as possible. The entire thing consists of very few components and comes in under $3 total. (priced per item on sparkfun… actually it was free since I had the components laying around)

• 555 timer
• 1k Resistor
• 10k Resistor
• 10uf Capacitor
• push button
• couple inches of wire
• about a square inch of protoboard

Connecting to the mouse PCB

First we crack open the mouse. I'm not going to cover that here since it'll be different with every mouse. For mine it was one screw then pull the top and bottom apart until you feel like it's going to break and it unclipped. This might not be how your mouse is held together so don't blame me if you break it in half trying to force it.

Once I got inside I used a multi-meter to find a good 5v+, gnd, and a pin to control the mouse clicks. Then just soldered a wire to each pin as shown. Black = GND, Green = 5v+, Red = Left Click Control wire.

Creating the prototype

It's been a while since I've played with 555 timers so first I did a prototype on a breadboard. I included an LED to show that I could make the LED flash using the mouses power then just connected the output (pin 3) from the 555 to the control wire that I ran from the mouse PCB previously.

Schematic

Next I put together a schematic of the system. The whole thing is just a 555 timer, a 10uF capacitor, a 1k Resistor, and a 10k resistor. The speed can be adjusted by changing the resistors. These are what I happened to have on hand. Also, I noticed if I made the autofire any faster the computer couldn't keep up with the clicks.

Creating the circuit board

I put it together with some protoboard. It could've probably been done as a "dead bug" circuit, but I prefer to keep things a little bit neater. Plus I was afraid of things moving around inside of the mouse and causing a short.

and the back all soldered together. It's not the neatest job, but it gets it done.

Connecting it to the mouse

Once everything was laid out on the board I just had to connect the 3 wires I connected to the mouse PCB earlier and give it a test. Guess what? It worked great

Putting the mouse back together

First I carefully drilled a hole in the side of the mouse to ensure the push button was in a convenient position to push with my thumb. Also, I had to make sure it cleared the mouse PCB on the inside. Then I took some snips and a razor blade and trimmed back some of the plastic parts inside the mouse to create a spot for the auto-fire circuit to fit.

All done!!

Then I just had to put the top of the mouse back on. Which was quite a task. I had to stop and carve out more plastic from the supports in the top to make room for the new circuit, but after a bit of cutting and squeezing it all fit back together and outside of the red button sticking out of the side you'd never know anything was done to it.

Testing time

All of the normal mouse features work great: clicking (left / right), scrolling, middle click, etc. To test out the autofire I just went to google and typed in "clicks per second" and clicked on the first link. Actually I did this the first time with the prototype on the breadboard. Then went back once it was all put together and this time I took a screen shot to show my click rate using the autofire button.

Luckily, there is a very easy solution (and don't say VNC… it sucks). There is a very easy way to enable remote desktop on Windows 7 Home Premium. Simply follow the instructions below and you'll be running a Remote Desktop (RDP) host on Windows 7 Home in a matter of minutes.

The First thing you need to do is download the Concurrent RDP Windows 7 RTM Patcher. You can get it here or here (mirror). Please, be safe and scan this file for viruses after you download it. I scanned it when I used it and it came up clean, but I don't host this file / didn't create it and you can't be too careful.

Now that you have the patcher downloaded we can start the process of unlocking remote desktop on your Windows 7 Home Premium computer.

1. Unzip the file you downloaded.
2. Right-click on the install file and click Run as administrator. If you receive a UAC prompt click "yes"
3. After this the Windows 7 RTM patcher will be opened in a new command window. It will look like this.
   

   Windows 7 Remote Desktop Patcher

   At this prompt feel free to read the text then press any key to start the process

4. Next you will see the following screen. This is asking if you want to allow multiple sessions per user. In most cases you do. So my advise is answer yes. So, you want to type Y and hit enter.
   

   Windows 7 enable Remote Desktop

    

5. Then you will be presented another question (pictured below) this will allow you to use a blank password on RDP. Again, I advise answering yes. Even if you say yes you CAN still use a password if you want, but if you ever want to use a blank password you can't if you answer no. Leave your options open and type Y and hit enter.

   

6. Wait and wait.. for me this step took quite a while. The patcher will now do all the work the double check that the fix worked. For whatever reason it waited a long time to ensure the service was actually listening for Remote Desktop connections. Once it's complete your screen should look like this.
   

   Remote Desktop Enabled on Windows 7

   Press any key and you should be all set.

On my computer for some reason it failed to properly configure the firewall. If this happens to you just go to the Windows control panel and click on firewall. Then, add an incoming TCP exception on port 3389 and you should be good to go.

Thats it now you can enjoy using remote desktop (RDP) on Windows 7 Home Premium.

Gaining root access on the Netgear Stora is amazingly easy. The first thing you need to do is get your product key. There is one located on the bottom of the device and one on the cd that came with it. Mine (for whatever reason) didn't match. For me the one on the Netgear Stora install CD was the correct one to use. This may not always be the case so try both.

Here is a picture where to find both (I edited out my product id and replaced it with X's)

NetGear Stora bottom

NetGear Stora CD

Gaining Root Access

Now that you have your Stora product id all you need to do is login via SSH using any user you have setup on your stora that has administrator access (in the web interface). However, if you just use the user name as is you won't be allowed access. Instead you have to add "_hipserv2_netgear_XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX" after the user name (replace the X's with your actual product key). For my example I will use my name Lenny as the user name and all X's for the product key. Any user with the administrator access flagged in the Netgear Stora web panel will have the ability to use the sudo command to gain root access.

Here is the process

NetGear Stora root

Why  it works

From what I can tell this is just a lame attempt by the developers to keep the general public form being able to shell into the device while still allowing themselves to get in for debugging / testing. It looks like the distribution of linux packaged with the Netgear Stora is shipped with a custom SSH server that appends a string including the product keys to the authorized user list.

I recommend setting up the following items right away…

• Install a repository on your netgear stora
• Set up path / environment variables
• Install nano
• Install a C Compiler (GCC)