mCapt

(WIP) Very simple and useless app for recording and visualising mouse events (Linux)

The application uses the /dev/input/mice input stream.

• advantage: All mouse devices are recording into this stream, no mouse detection neccessary
• disadvantage: Legacy format with limited data (no mousewheel by default)

Future plans:

• replay mouse data
• absolute position capture: (only if we can keep dependencies minimal)

Docs

Mousedev event handler API

• https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v5.5/input/input.html#mousedev

PS/2 packet format(s)

• https://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~jayar/ece241_08F/AudioVideoCores/ps2/ps2.html
• https://wiki.osdev.org/Mouse_Input

Usage

Record data

Usage: (sudo) mcapt [OPTION]... [DATALOG]
Record mouse movement into a comma-separated data file (DATALOG).
       -v, --verbose         enable verbose output
       -h, --help        show this help :)

Mouse movements are stored as comma-separated data. See data/dlog.csv if DATALOG path was not specified

• data/dlog.csv

; time=1711060390 device=/dev/input/mice
; display=0, screenw=1920, screenh=1080, mousex=0, mousey=0
1220632,-11,3,0,0,0
1228569,-9,2,0,0,0
1236311,-5,2,0,0,0
...

data format:

<elapsed microseconds>,<relative x>,<relative y>,<left button>,<right button>,<middle button>

Visualize data:

These logs can be exported into an SVG

./vis ./data/dlog.csv
# * writing to './data/dlog.svg'