Using a mouse's 2D scroll wheel as a trackball to move cursor?

[moeburn]

So a friend of mine gave me a Kensington SlimBlade Media Mouse, it's a really nice looking mouse and it has laser optics, which none of my current mice do, and it is apparently freaking expensive for a mouse.  But it is also crap - he gave it to me because the left mouse button doesn't work well, you have to press really hard for it to work, and there is no middle mouse button.  So no middle clicking on links to open them in a new tab, or middle clicking on tabs to close them.   The laser optical sensor is also stupidly way off to the side.  It is not in the center of either axis on the bottom of the mouse, it is about 1cm from the edge of the right mouse button on the bottom.  That means it is useless on curved surfaces like a couch armrest.

 

There is, however, some cool features that might be salvageable.  One is a 2d scroll ball, in the form of an optical trackball.  But it only functions as a scroll wheel; that is to say scrolling around websites and documents and such.  Does anyone know of a software method that can take scroll wheel movements and turn them into cursor movements?  That way I could have a tiny little free trackball mouse.  

 

Another cool feature is a media controller (play/pause/skip/volume), but it is stupidly placed on the bottom.  If I can't turn the scroll ball into a cursor trackball, I might just rip everything non-essential out of this mouse and make myself a wireless media remote.

[Rigby]

I don't know of any way to do that and I doubt it is possible since it is detected by the computer as a scroll wheel. You might be able to salvage a switch out of another mouse to fix the mouse button issue but it isn't really worth the trouble. I'd say just junk it myself, or keep it for parts. :)

[moeburn]

  On 24/05/2014 at 21:17, Bonfire said:

I don't know of any way to do that and I doubt it is possible since it is detected by the computer as a scroll wheel. You might be able to salvage a switch out of another mouse to fix the mouse button issue but it isn't really worth the trouble. I'd say just junk it myself, or keep it for parts. :)

 

Good thing I refreshed before replying, yes the wheel is more than just an X axis! ;)

 

I would imagine it is possible, after all, we have things like Joy-to-Mouse, and things that let you use your numpad as a mouse controller... why not a mouse scroll wheel?  I was just hoping on the off chance that someone knew of a program called MouseWheel-To-Cursor or something :p  If I could use the wheel as a trackball, then I could easily fix the mouse button.

 

But I'm probably going to hack the media controller out of it.

[HawkMan]

Not sure if It can do what you want, but you can try

http://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/XMouseButtonControl.htm

[moeburn]

  On 24/05/2014 at 21:36, HawkMan said:

Not sure if It can do what you want, but you can try

http://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/XMouseButtonControl.htm

 

So close!  It can assign mouse wheel up/down/left/right to just about anything except controlling the mouse cursor.  Which I guess would be pretty complicated to program, because you would have to have options for speed and acceleration and such.  But it is a very cool app otherwise, and I might have other uses for it.  Thanks for the link!

[neoraptor]

just disassemble and look at the problematic areas, it is probably just dirty or something was spilled on it

[moeburn]

  On 24/05/2014 at 21:44, neoraptor said:

just disassemble and look at the problematic areas, it is probably just dirty or something was spilled on it

 

If you're talking about the faulty left mouse button, that is not the topic at hand here.  I know how to fix it, and it is the least of my priorities.  I want to know if I can use a two-dimensional mouse wheel to control a mouse cursor.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

I have that mouse, and if the ball worked, then it's a nice mouse.  But it doesn't.  About a month after getting it, the ball has become so tempramental that I binned it.