NAME
hama-slide-mouse-control - Control settings of the Hama SLide S1 USB
gaming mouse
SYNOPSIS
hama-slide-mouse-control [ [ -d idVendor:idProduct ] 0-OR-MORE-
COMMANDS ...
| -h | --help | -v | --version ]
DESCRIPTION
This program controls the Hama SLide S1 USB gaming mouse: It allows
changing the DPI settings and to switch between three different modes
which influence the functionality of the two "thumb buttons".
Note: To be able to access the USB mouse, the program must either be
run as root, be installed suid root, or udev must have been configured
to allow access for normal users. See the section "udev Setup" below.
The -d option can be used to specify the USB device that the program
should search for. The option argument is a string of the form
"056e:001c" (this particular value is also the default), i.e. the USB
vendor and product IDs in hexadecimal, separated by a colon. See the
output of the lsusb command to find out the IDs of connected devices.
COMMANDS
Zero or more commands can be specified on the command line. If no
commands at all are present, the program can be used to check for the
presence of a Hama SLide mouse on the machine via its exit status.
Otherwise, the commands are executed in the supplied order. If more
than one Hama SLide mouse is connected, all commands are executed on
all mice.
The mouse is a very simple device: You can only write settings to it,
the current state of the settings cannot be read from it.
MODE 1: SELECT DPI VIA THUMB BUTTON 1
Command: scroll
This is the default mode of the mouse, it is activated immediately
after plugging in the device. In this mode, the scroll wheel selects
the mouse DPI while thumb button 1 is pressed down. Clicks on thumb
button 1 cannot be detected by the OS. Thumb button 2 acts like another
right mouse button. The current DPI setting is left unchanged.
MODE 2: FIXED DPI SETTING
Commands: 400 800 1200 1600
In this mode, the mouse resolution is set to one of four DPI values by
specifying that value. Both thumb buttons are available to the OS - by
default, they act like another middle and right mouse button. The
colour of the scroll wheel indicates the DPI setting: blue (400 dpi),
green (800 dpi), cyan (1200 dpi) or red (1600 dpi).
Note: The program allows you to specify more than one command. You can
use this to select a certain DPI value first, but switch to "scroll"
mode again afterwards, e.g. with: hama-slide-mouse-control 400 scroll.
A small, harmless hardware bug of the mouse exhibits itself in this
case: When using the scroll wheel afterwards to select another
resolution, the mouse orders the other DPI states as if the program-
controlled DPI change had not taken place.
MODE 3: THUMB BUTTONS SWITCH BETWEEN TWO FIXED DPI SETTINGS
Commands: 400+800 400+1200 400+1600 800+1200 800+1600 1200+1600
When this mode is used, each of the two thumb buttons selects a certain
DPI setting when clicked. Thumb button 1 always selects the lower,
thumb button 2 the higher setting. This results in the different
combinations above. The current DPI setting is left unchanged. Clicks
on either thumb button cannot be detected by the OS in this mode.
RETURN CODES
The program returns 0 if all commands were successfully sent to the
device. If no commands are given, it returns 0 if the mouse is plugged
in. It returns 1 if no Hama SLide mouse (USB vendor 056e, product ID
001c) is connected to the computer. It returns 2 if there was an error
sending commands to the mouse, either because the mouse returned an
error in response to a command or because you do not have the access
rights to change mouse settings.
UDEV SETUP UNDER LINUX
EXECUTING HAMA-SLIDE-MOUSE-CONTROL WHEN THE MOUSE IS PLUGGED IN
If you have root access and you are the only user on your machine, use
the following udev rule to set up the mouse. The given command will be
executed whenever the mouse is plugged in or the computer boots or
resumes. Simply create a file named /etc/udev/rules.d/60-hama-slide-
mouse-control.rules with the following content. Of course, you can
execute the program with parameters of your choice instead of "400":
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="056e", SYSFS{idProduct}=="001c", RUN+="/root/bin/hama-slide-mouse-control 400"
Execute udevcontrol reload_rules as root after any changes to the
configuration file.
ALLOWING USERS TO SET UP THE MOUSE ON LOGIN
If several users (possibly with differing wishes about the mouse setup)
use the machine, it is possible give all users permission to set up the
mouse, instead of only root. Put the following into
/etc/udev/rules.d/60-hama-slide-mouse-control.rules:
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="056e", SYSFS{idProduct}=="001c", MODE="666"
Users can then run hama-slide-mouse-control from startup scripts when
their Gnome or KDE desktop starts up. It should be noted that this
setup will allow remotely logged-in users to annoy the local user by
playing around with the settings and letting the mouse flash in all its
colours! :-) Of course you can also add both the RUN and MODE keywords
to the udev rule. Finally, you can restrict write access to users in a
certain group, by using MODE="660", GROUP="hamamouse" or similar.
SETTING HAMA-SLIDE-MOUSE-CONTROL SUID ROOT
It is possible to set the suid bit on the hama-slide-mouse-control to
allow ordinary users to change mouse settings even if they do not have
access to the USB device. The program has been written with care, using
it this way should be fairly safe. However, running hama-slide-mouse-
control suid root is NOT recommended because suid binaries should be
avoided in general! In this particular case, there is even less of a
reason to do this, as udev provides a mechanism to allow all users to
access the device.
The -d option cannot be used if the program is run suid root.
ASSIGNING ACTIONS TO THE THUMB BUTTONS WITH IMWHEEL
The author has been unable to get the thumb buttons to do anything
other than act as "clones" of the middle and right mouse button, but at
least one web page <URL:http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Extratasten> claims
that it is possible to redefine the meaning of the buttons, so here is
a short description of how to configure this with imwheel.
Having installed imwheel, edit /etc/X11/imwheel/startup.conf: Set
IMWHEEL_START=1 and IMWHEEL_PARAMS=’-b "0 0 8 9"’. Next, check the
Section "InputDevice" of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. It is
recommended to use Option "Protocol" "evdev" and to comment out any
ZAxisMapping and Buttons settings, as they can cause confusing
behaviour with newer imwheel versions. Now configure mappings in your
~/.imwheelrc file. For example, two lines "^XMMS" and None, Thumb1,
Return will define the (not very useful) action that in any window
whose title starts with "XMMS", a click with "none" modifier keys (like
Shift) on the Thumb1 button will simulate a keypress of the Return key.
Restart X11 to have the new settings loaded.
SEE ALSO
lsusb(8), imwheel(1), xorg.conf(5), mouse(4x), udev(7), udevcontrol(8)
ABOUT THIS PROGRAM
This program and documentation was written by Richard Atterer
<URL:http://atterer.net>. Copyright 2007 Richard Atterer, released
under GPL v2.
The USB commands that are sent to the device were obtained by reverse-
engineering the protocol used by Hama’s control program for Windows.
This was done using usbsnoop/Snoopy
<URL:http://benoit.papillault.free.fr/usbsnoop/> by Benoit Papillault -
many thanks!
24 June 2007