Sticky plastic FAQ

I haven't found one. I've used talc to cover the stickiness, but it doesn't look right as most affected surfaces are black. If you can get just the plastic shell free and put the electronics/buttons to one side I wonder if the body could be painted with varnish - as long as the solvent in that didn't affect the plastic.

Other than that, just buy a replacement remote at Amazon/eBay. They aren't usually expensive.

I have found that a good hard scrub with meths gets rid of the stickiness at least for a year or two.

nib

Isopropyl alcohol will remove the stickiness from "rubber reversion" but it still needs elbow grease.

Afterwards I apply a thin coating of WD40 but I don't think there's much science about it working as a retarder.

I scraped the finger grease out of the nooks and crannies, then gave it a rub with some isopropyl soaked lint-free wipers ... feels better for now ... might give it a dip in the ultrasonic cleaner.

Some digging around suggests the material is thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) and 'reversion' is where the bonds in the polymer break down. I wasn't able to find good literature on the causes of reversion, but anecdotally people suggest oxygen/ozone, heat, UV and skin oil hasten it. That might mean the coating of WD makes it worse.

I wonder if there's a kind of coating that would block environmental factors. Might make things worse if it was an oil based coating though.

Theo

Normally I find that my mice wheels go soft after a time of non-use, so skin oils are implicated, this remote has been left in a windowsill for a few months, normal glass will block a lot of UV, but will have got more than when sitting on the settee.

Golly. I haven't seen a mouse with a wheel in several decades

a middle button/scroll wheel on top, not a ball underneath

I've got three. One to go with my Pi, and the other two are Amazon Basics ones which don't appear to suffer from any degradation. A mouse with a wheel is any case a poor substitute for Apple's Mighty Mouse that sad to say they no longer make, which had a small ball on the top so one could scroll in any direction. Its only down side was that the ball being small, one had to dismantle it about once a year to clear the crud from the rollers. The rollers were tiny so this was a very delicate operation. And, en plus, it required a sharp Stanley knife to open, since it was glued together.

ah...no, not had any issues with my logitech mice ever.

I haven't used a separate mouse for a long time but I do remember some optical variants not working in bright sunshine. The plastic cases let enough light through to swamp the input to the optical receivers within. When first encountering it was confusing why they worked intermittently. They worked indoors with artificial light, on cloudy days when sat near a window or if covered more with a hand. They only stopped working when enough of the case was exposed to strong sunlight :)

I remember those. Since the tech support buck stopped on my desk. We worked out what it was pretty quickly.