Position data from two usb mice?

[grad8097]

I'm trying to use mice connected through usb to read the position of two carts.  I'm using a usb-6008 daq and therefore can't run encoders through it.  I just need one axis from each mouse but the mouse initialization function only recognizes the cursor which both mice control.  How do I differentiate between mice so that I can read the position of each one?

[smercurio_fc]

Unfortunately you have a great big thing standing in your way called the operating system. This is what's limiting you. The OS will capture the data coming from the mice and simply pass along the "ORed" info to the applications. All that the applications see is, essentially, a single mouse.

You may be able to do this by hooking into the operating system, but how to do so depends on the operating system you're using, and whether or not functionality exists in the API. Another option is to use a different input device for one, like a joystick.

[music2131]

There was a nugget on having LabVIEW handling a USB mouse, disconnecting it from being used for cursor control and instead dumping raw data into LabVIEW.

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&thread.id=340676&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

It comes with sample code, a little time playing around with drivers and you've got access to the raw mouse data.

You could have one used for a regular Windows mouse cursor, and the second used only for data collection (or one for a cursor, and 2 for data collection).

Message Edited by music2131 on 05-19-2009 11:15 PM