Handling weird input devices

[Colin McGregor]

On 1/31/09, Giles Orr <gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> The short version: I bought a Contour Shuttle Xpress
> (http://www.contourdesign.com/shuttlepro/shuttlexpress.htm).  I'd like
> to get it working (ie. be able to map all the buttons and dials to
> functions of my choosing) with Debian testing (amd64).  Should I use
> gizmod (which has never worked for me in the past) or the much more
> ancient evrouter (which is much praised, but seems to have been
> abandoned five years ago), or is there some other program or method
> better suited to this?

Question is, "Is this a an odd looking device that acts like something
mundane like say a mouse?". I have a Silverstone LC-14 computer case
that has a bunch of buttons on of the case front. Turns out the case
looks to the motherboard like a standard USB keyboard. I've put notes
on how to make the LC-14 case happy with the MythTV program here:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/SilverstoneTek_LC14

a tweaked .xmodmaprc file is almost all you need to make the LC14
happy. Is your device just as simple?

> The long version: Many years ago I bought a Griffin Powermate
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffin_powermate) - essentially a large
> knob, looks like it's from an old stereo.  Except that it attaches via
> USB and glows blue.  At the time, the best choice to get it working
> with Linux was powermated
> (http://sourceforge.net/projects/powermated/) which is a bit of a pig
> to set up, but works.  I adore the Powermate: when someone calls, I
> don't have to find my music application (which desktop did I leave it
> on?), I just poke the Powermate and it pauses (or restarts) the music.
>  powermated is now deprecated in favour of the more generic gizmod
> (http://gizmod.sourceforge.net/) which - in theory - can work with the
> Powermate and any specialty buttons on weird keyboards or devices.
> I've spent perhaps six hours over several days fighting with gizmod
> (most recently about a year ago) and I found that in debug mode it
> would acknowledge any push or twist on the Powermate correctly, but
> nothing I did with the config files would actually make them _do_
> anything.  That sent me back to powermated, but obviously that's not
> going to work quite as well with a new device.  I've never tried
> evrouter, and it seems unwise to start when it appears abandoned.  But
> I'm less than inspired by gizmod too.  gizmod is available as a Debian
> package, evrouter isn't.  xev shows most of the buttons on the Xpress
> do nothing at all by default, and those that do something are hard to
> map because they're indistinguishable from mouse button clicks.
>
> Does anyone have experience with gizmod or the Shuttle Xpress under
> Linux?  Thanks.
>
> If I've failed to provide needed information, let me know.
>
> --
> Giles
> http://www.gilesorr.com/
> gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
> --
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