X10 MouseRemote for Linux
by Dan Wilga

One of the things that seems to be missing is good software to take advantage of the special buttons on the MouseRemote under Unix. Here is my attempt to solve that problem. It was tested in Linux, but the client at least should work on nearly any flavor of Unix. The server may need some tweaking.

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The Server

To compile the server, start by looking at the Makefile. The default install locations are /usr/local/bin for the multimoused (daemon), and /usr/local/sbin for multimouse, which is a script to simplify running multimoused.

If everything is to your liking, type:

make
make install

Please note that the two FIFOs this script creates for you will have the permissions 666, meaning any user can read or modify them. You may want to restrict this after running make install. The first FIFO, /dev/mumse is the new MultiMouse device. The FIFO /dev/x10.fifo is the MouseRemote data.

Next, you will have to start MultiMouse. You should do this by running the /usr/local/bin/multimouse command as root. Here are some suggested commandlines. Modify these depending on your particular device names:

For a PS/2 mouse:

/usr/local/bin/multimouse -X10 /dev/psaux &
This assumes you are using the psaux device for the PS/2 port, and your desktop mouse is also plugged into the MouseRemote interface.

For a serial mouse:

/usr/local/bin/multimouse -SX10 /dev/ttyS0 &
Note the different device name: SX10 (Serial X10?).
This assumes you are using the ttyS0 (COM1 in PC-speak) device for the MouseRemote, and your desktop mouse is also plugged into the MouseRemote interface.

Once you get things working, you can add this command to one of your system startup files, like /etc/rc.d/rc.local.

Next, you have to change the configurations for all of your programs that normally use the mouse port to instead use the new MultiMouse device, /dev/mumse.

IMPORTANT: You also need to change the mouse protocol type to MouseSystems, regardless of the actual type your mouse is! It took me a while to figure this one out :-).

For example, let's say your X Window configuration, XF86Config, looks like this:

  Section "Pointer"
     Protocol "Microsoft"
     Device   "/dev/psaux"
     ...whatever...
  EndSection

  Section "Pointer"
     Protocol "MouseSystems"
     Device   "/dev/mumse"
     ...whatever...
  EndSection

Once you've done this, and made sure the daemon is running, you should be able to use X just like you always did, with either your regular mouse or the MouseRemote.

The Client

Now we come to the good part: doing something with all that MouseRemote data that is in the FIFO. To run my program you will need:

You will probably want to run the client as a particular user, and you don't want other users to be able to run it. So it might just be easiest to leave it somewhere in the home directory of that user. Of course, you can always put it somewhere like /usr/local if you want to.

The first thing you'll want to do is have a look at the configuration file, MouseRemote.conf. It has comments about how to configure the commands that will be run when you hit each key on the remote, depending on which mode the remote is in.

Note that the MouseRemote only sends keystrokes for PC, WEB, CD, DVD, and PHONE modes to the interface. There's no way for this program to act on keystrokes while one of the other devices is selected.

Within the .conf file, the keys can be listed in any order, or left out completely. Each device has its own section of the file, starting with [DEVICENAME].

If a key's name starts with a period (like ".VolDown"), then when you press and hold that key on the remote, the script will try to execute the command as quickly as possible, repeatedly, until you let go of the key. You'll want to use this for functions like Page Up/Down and Volume Up/Down.

If the name does not start with a period, then the script will wait a while before trying to execute the command again. This prevents things like a command to close the top browser window from quickly closing all of your windows before you let go of the key.

The key repeat rate is controlled by the constant $DEBOUNCE_EXPIRE in the MouseRemote.pl file. The default is 0.75, or 3/4 of a second. However, you may find that even with autorepeat turned on, programs like Netscape react a little slowly. This is due to the fact that we're using a Perl script to run a program to do something that is more readily controlled in the user interface (X). On my Cyrix P200, scrolling a Web page in Netscape is only a tiny bit slower than I'd like it to be, though.

I haven't included any CD or DVD commands in the sample file because I don't have a sound card in my Linux box, so I wouldn't be able to test these things. For more information on Netscape's "remote" parameter, run: netscape --help. And if you manage to figure out how to make Netscape immediately scroll to the top/bottom of the current Web page, let me know :-).

Before you run MouseRemote.pl, you may have to change the very first line of the program to point to the exact location of your Perl executable. Do a "whereis perl" to find this.

Runtime syntax:

  MouseRemote.pl [-c configfile] [-d] [-h] [-p pidfile] [PC|CD|WEB|DVD|PHONE]

  -d: Turn on debugging messages
  -c: Load an alternate conf file. By default, when the program runs it looks
      for the config file MouseRemote.conf in the current directory.
  -h: This help message
  -p: File where the script's pid is written. The default is MouseRemote.pid.
  Device name: The default device to use. This script has no way of knowing
      what device is currently selected by the MouseRemote when it starts, so
      you may have to press a device button before using a MouseRemote button
      for the first time after the script starts. The WEB device is the default
      if this parameter is not used.

Once you get MouseRemote.pl working the way you want it to, you'll probably want to add it to the .Xclients file of whatever user runs X. It's important that you NOT do this for more than one user, though. A sample command you could add to .Xclients would be:

  cd ~/MouseRemote
  exec MouseRemote.pl &

To force MouseRemote.pl to reload its config file, send it a SIGHUP signal. One way to do this is:

  kill -SIGHUP `cat MouseRemote.pid`

So, it only follows that you can also terminate the process with:

  kill `cat MouseRemote.pid` 

About My Setup

I find that clicktv.com (the address is listed for the Guide button) is one of the better sources for TV listings. No annoying frames, and only one ad banner to deal with.

References