more then one mouse?(closed)

SamLemke · Post by **SamLemke** » Jul 13, 2009 22:11

is there a way to have many mice running on diffrent cursers?
i would like to use mice to measure distance on a servo but i want to run more then one servo any ideas on pluging in more then one mouse and haveing more then one input coordents on the mice? thanks!

i know could track two servos on one mouse (x,y)

-sam

vdecampo · Post by **vdecampo** » Jul 13, 2009 22:13

I think Windows 7 supports multiple pointing devices.

SamLemke · Post by **SamLemke** » Jul 16, 2009 17:43

What about Freebasic? how can i comunicate with more then one mouse?

Dinosaur · Post by **Dinosaur** » Jul 16, 2009 22:02

Hi all

Probably totally irrelavant, but I have ps2 mouse and usb mouse both connected, and both can control the same cursor. (in Dos)
Perhaps there is a way of separating them.

Regards

vdecampo · Post by **vdecampo** » Jul 16, 2009 22:14

Here. Check this SDK from Microsoft...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... 9644ce0f9b

-Vince

MichaelW · Post by **MichaelW** » Jul 17, 2009 5:20

AFAIK under Windows at any given time there is only one mouse cursor. Per the Microsoft documentation for most of the functions that manipulate the cursor, “the cursor is a shared resource”.

Hezad · Post by **Hezad** » Jul 17, 2009 16:36

Hey :)

With an arduino or any programmable device, you can easily send coordinates through the serial port. You can use potentiometers (12 are easily usable at the same time on an arduino), so I guess you could use mouses too. I don't know how USB or PS/2 (or serial) mouses protocols work but there must be a way to do it.

etko · Post by **etko** » Jul 29, 2009 16:26

MultiPoint is useless Microsoft .NET crap loaded over much lower level MS API:RawInput

This API has access to all connected input devices to machine. PS/2 devices end up in same pool with USB ones. Altough cursor and keyboard input is shared device, thus any mouse will move single cursor, if I remember correctly you can select any device with RawInput and remove it from input stream. Then you can handle all the messages from this device yourself. I Wanted to try RawInput but I never got to it. It works only for WinXP SP2, if I am not mistaken, and above.

Before that you can use open source package CPNMouse, it works with Win2K+, but requires nasty mouse driver install and you can easily fsck up your mouse setup. It can be repaired tho but it's much harder to use.

Two things to rember:

computers can have multiple monitors, don't forget about it -> I use this extensively (MultiMon), one time I had 3 on my workstation. Many apps can fsckup on this. I had problem with CPNMouse being limited only to main display.
windows was not really made to draw two different cursors at same time. At least I had problems with cursor background artefacts with this, using plain Win32 Cursor API and CPN mouse. I have one idea how to overcome that, but havn't got time to implement it. If you draw your cursors yourself, like in OpenGL window, it's no problem as you must handle even default cursor yourself.

If I was trying to do multiple mouses today I would try RawInput on windows.

SamLemke · Post by **SamLemke** » Aug 25, 2009 2:17

well you could you access the diffrent mice with free basic?

bfuller · Post by **bfuller** » Aug 27, 2009 7:02

I would think you could do it by putting a microcontroller in between.

For instance the micro would have to fool the mice and pretend it is a PC and get data from mouse one and then from mouse two. It would then package up a message containing both sets of data to send via serial port to the real PC running FB. FB would then decode the message to extract both sets of mouse data. FB would have to create, display and control the different cursors as the operating system would be oblivious to all this and would still be getting mouse data in the normal way. You would need to keep the "real" mouse so that the PC could be controlled in the normal way-----but just move it to the edge of the screen when you are playing with the pseudo mice.