Kensington Expert Mouse, Scrolling

[cookie]

Hey there,

I am about to buy myself a Kensington Expert Mouse but I don't know if I can scroll with it?

It's not the current one with the scrollring, I am going for this one:


I tryed to find information about the trackball and how to scroll with it, unfortunately I didn't find anything usefull

Can someone help me here?

Thanks!

[matt3o]

are you on linux?

[cookie]

Yes I am at the office and this where I need this one.

[matt3o]

cool, then you can set any key to convert the ball into a scroller

http://deskthority.net/mice-other-input ... ml#p122958

[cookie]

Ohh nice, but do I need root or sudo rights do do this?
Because my boss is a controll freak who will not give admin or sudo rigts to us (Developer.... lol)

But you don't know if the mouse can scroll by itself? Probably not

[matt3o]

Ohh nice, but do I need root or sudo rights do do this?
Because my boss is a controll freak who will not give admin or sudo rigts to us (Developer.... lol)

yes, unfortunately you need root access for that (but I bet there's something you can do in user space, but of course you'd need to run a script at every boot)

But you don't know if the mouse can scroll by itself? Probably not

I would be surprised if it doesn't, but I can't confirm, sorry.

[matt3o]

upon further investigation it seems that the trackball supports both "autoscroll" and "scroll with mouse" features. The problem is that I believe they are both drivers dependent (ie: you can set those features from the included software, that will probably be windows only)

[cookie]

Thanks a ton matt3o!

I will buy that thing and see how I this will work

[Adaephon]

You can modify the behaviour of input devices on Linux as normal user with 'xinput'. It should be available on any reasonably recent distribution (at least those using X.Org), but may not be installed by default.

I use the following code to configure my Logitech M570:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

## Name of trackball device, do not use numeric ID as it may change between reboots
TRACKBALL="Logitech Unifying Device. Wireless PID:1028"

## Configure "forward" button (9) as second middle button (2)
xinput set-button-map "$TRACKBALL" 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 2 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

## set up omni-directional scrolling when pressing and holding the "back" button (8)
## set button presses for movement on axes in order left right up down
xinput set-prop "$TRACKBALL" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 6 7 4 5
## assign button for scroll mode; this is the physical button number and not affected by the button map
xinput set-prop "$TRACKBALL" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 8
## start scroll mode immediately, values greater than 0 allow for clicking with the button
xinput set-prop "$TRACKBALL" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 0
## set speed on range 1 to 16, with 1 being the fastest
xinput set-prop "$TRACKBALL" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Inertia" 8
## enable scrolling
xinput set-prop "$TRACKBALL" "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 1

I'm running this script with the auto-start feature of my window manager. Adding it to '~/.xsession' (or maybe '~/.xinit', depending on your distribution and method of starting a graphical session) is also an option.

You can get a list of your input devices with:

Code: Select all

xinput list

A list of properties of a device:

Code: Select all

xinput list-props <device>

More help:

Code: Select all

xinput help
man xinput
man evdev

[cookie]

Thanks a lot, I will inform you how this turned out for me. Unfortunately I didn't got the Trackball
But I definately wan't to go with this one, like everything about it

[seebart]

I'll necro cookie's thread from five years ago:

I got this same Kensignton Expert Mouse months ago for cheap BUT while I've got a cable for it the connector is mini-DIN 8 pin which Apple also used back in the day. I can't find much online so far in terms of connection options. Another fun fact is this device does not have any screws anywhere on the case so it must be a snap-in case which makes things worse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-DIN_ ... connectors

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[Daniel Beardsmore]

That's a Mac serial cable; ADB (for keyboards and mice etc) was Mini-DIN-4. Also, I have a feeling that the symbol on the right-hand plug denotes LocalTalk (AppleTalk over serial) so that's likely not even the original cable. That suggests RS-422. This could be interesting …

[seebart]

That's a Mac serial cable; ADB (for keyboards and mice etc) was Mini-DIN-4. Also, I have a feeling that the symbol on the right-hand plug denotes LocalTalk (AppleTalk over serial) so that's likely not even the original cable. That suggests RS-422. This could be interesting …

I thought it was an Apple cable, I don't boubt it's not the original cable since this Kensington Expert Mouse was part of an jumble box of old parts. Back into my basement storage it goes...until I stumble across something usable.

As so often our peers at GH have had this topic and just for fun I found a related funky old print AD:

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=18067.0

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=17420.0

Spoiler:

kensington_win_large.jpg (342.15 KiB) Viewed 6245 times

[rich1051414]

Because my boss is a controll freak who will not give admin or sudo rigts to us (Developer.... lol)

Smart man. (I am a developer, too)

It isn't that he thinks you are particularly stupid. It is that he thinks everyone is particularly stupid. Don't take it personally

[Daniel Beardsmore]

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=17420.0

Well, that was a strange topic …

[seebart]

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=17420.0

Well, that was a strange topic …

Yes, somewhat monotonous.