Mouse mini-stick as additional axes?

[LittleCannon]

Hi, One quick question.

Is it possible to define mini-stick as additional axes? I'm playing Elite Dangerous and it would be great to be able to define mini-stick as analogue lateral thrust control.

[nirenjan]

That's an interesting thought. Can you give the kernel module a try for now? It maps the mouse stick to ABS_TILT_X and ABS_TILT_Y, so it may get detected as an additional axis.

[LittleCannon]

I've quickly recompiled fresh version and, according to evtest, it is still detected ABS_THUMBY and ABS_THUMBX

Also, I tried in game, with and without mouse option enabled, it is not registering any movement as axis.

[nirenjan]

Hmm, can you confirm the output of lsmod and uname -a? If you build the kernel module against your kernel (just cd to the kernel_module directory and run make), and insmod it, it should change the axis reported by the kernel driver.

The default kernel driver will report the mouse stick as ABS_MISC and ABS_MISC+1, which ED may not support.

[nirenjan]

Also, it appears that you are using x52evtest, that is just decoding the raw report from the joystick - it doesn't change anything from the kernel, while ED is probably reading it from the kernel instead. You want to use evtest, this is a system utility that will read the events from the kernel.

[LittleCannon]

I'm on 5.16 kernel (Debian Sid) 5.16.0-1-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian 5.16.7-2 (2022-02-09) x86_64 GNU/Linux

OK, partial success. After insmoding it, I was able to assign X axis and it works quite nicely, but it is recognized in game as slider above mouse stick. Y axis is not recognized at all. evtest.txt

[LittleCannon]

Oh, and if it will be of any use, here is evtest before insmod. As you can see, Y axis is (not)recognized as "?" evtes-before_insmodt.txt

[nirenjan]

Hmm, I don't know how ED is mapping the axes, I don't play it myself. It seems like the kernel module is doing the right thing - but ED is not recognizing the axes. Another thing I've found is that if you are launching ED through Steam, then Steam may be mapping the controller in a different way, so you may want to try disabling Steam's controller logic.

[LittleCannon]

I did disable Steam Controllers, but it appears it is ED thing. Never mind, it was just an idea. I'll close this issue now.

[nirenjan]

Feel free to play around with the reporting in the kernel module. It may just be that ED recognizes a different set of axes than what the kernel module reports. Here are the known axes from the kernel:

ABS_X
ABS_Y
ABS_Z
ABS_RX
ABS_RY
ABS_RZ
ABS_THROTTLE
ABS_RUDDER
ABS_WHEEL
ABS_GAS
ABS_BRAKE
ABS_HAT0X
ABS_HAT0Y
ABS_HAT1X
ABS_HAT1Y
ABS_HAT2X
ABS_HAT2Y
ABS_HAT3X
ABS_HAT3Y
ABS_PRESSURE
ABS_DISTANCE
ABS_TILT_X
ABS_TILT_Y
ABS_TOOL_WIDTH
ABS_VOLUME
ABS_MISC

It's likely that ABS_PRESSURE, ABS_DISTANCE, ABS_TOOL_WIDTH and ABS_VOLUME may not be helpful, but the others might be a good set to try.