Using multiple mice separately, on identified USB ports

Scripting Issues
1

Hey everyone

I am quite new to Panda3D. I’m using Windows, and am writing an application where I’m trying to control it using several computer mice in parallel. I actually manage to do this as described in the manual (under panda3d.org/manual/index.php/Mouse_Support) using in the config file:

[color=blue]
read-raw-mice #t

and then in the program something like:

[color=blue]
#reading virtual system mouse coordinates; which I actually don’t use
md = base.win.getPointer(0)
x = md.getX()
y = md.getY()

#reading coordinates of physical mouse 1
md1 = base.win.getPointer(1)
x1 = md1.getX()
y1 = md1.getY()

#reading coordinates of physical mouse 2
md2 = base.win.getPointer(2)
x2 = md2.getX()
y2 = md2.getY()

#and so on for a couple more mice…

But one big problem I encounter is that each time I plug something in or out of one of the USB ports, or each time I try to do this on a different computer, all the arrangement of the mice changes; it seems like the number of USB devices present and the order in which the different mice are plugged in matters a lot.

Ideally, I would like to be able to tell it once in the beginning to take the coordinates from the mice connected to particular USB ports. I don’t know how to do this, and while tha manual hints that it’s possible (i.e. that each mouse has a name which uniquely identifies it, based on its product key and port), it never actually explains how to access or use this information.

Can someone help me out here?

2

It does…

for mouse in base.pointerWatcherNodes:
  print "NAME=", mouse.getName()
  print "X=", mouse.getMouseX()
  print "Y=", mouse.getMouseY()

Print name will be the name of the mouse. As for checking, you can have a loop/task that check to see if a mouse is in use or not, and then use its input as needed.

3

Well, no, it doesn’t solve the problem. The mice in mouse.getName() are identified by names like “watcher0”, “watcher1”, “watcher2” etc, but their identity is not constant. To clarify, if I plug some of the mice out and then plug them in again, the same mice will now have different names even if I plugged them back each into the same USB port. Similarly, if I reboot the machine the identitiy could change too; I think it has a lot to do with the order in which the machine recognizes them.

What I would really want is the ability to unanimously address each individual moise through the USB port it is plugged into, but other solutions would be welcome too.

Anyone?