SpaceMouse Pro/Ent for Their Ergo Aspect

[ajjvn]

Hi all,

I am looking for some product usage feedback regarding the SpaceMouse Pro/Ent models. But first, a quick backgrounder…

I’m an I.T. professional of 30+ years now which also suggests I’m getting on in my years. Growing up, I lived on bicycles and computers with a healthy dose of weight training scattered throughout. Needless to say, those activities have not been kind to my shoulder sockets. I’ll be having shoulder tendon repairs in my right shoulder here soon (I’m right hand dominant) and likely my left shoulder once my right shoulder in healed/stable for full-time use again.

I was looking into finger (not thumb) based trackball controllers to use left-handed (non-dominant hand) while my right shoulder heals and is in a sling for six weeks and non-usable for at a minimum of three months…with hopefully full usage at about six months. In my research for a trackball, I happily stumbled upon the SpaceMouse products. From my perusal of these forums, it sounds like the Pro and Enterprise models can be tweaked to be used like a traditional 2D mouse with some caveats. (Also, a shout out to forum member @jwick for his kind, patient, and insightful responses to many posts often related to the topic at hand.)

I would have reasons to use the SpaceMouse for its intended uses but if it can also function as a daily use 2D mouse during my upcoming health situation then all the better.

So my questions are:

• Given the caveats of using the SpaceMouse as a traditional 2D mouse, would it function well enough as a traditional mouse for use on a daily basis? The caveats being concern about 2D mouse cursor acceleration/velocity being different than a traditional mouse as well as being less accurate (in 2D mouse mode) when trying to do something mouse-wise that requires accuracy such as resizing an Excel spreadsheet column.

• The Pro model, with its larger and well-placed “1”, “2”, “3”, and “4” Command key, seems like a good layout for mimicking a traditional mouse’s buttons. Mapping the “Enter” and “Delete” buttons as traditional mouse buttons on the Enterprise model would probably work decently as well. Given that I will have some use for normal 3D usage of the controller for some projects, should one opt for the Enterprise with its enhancements if money is not a concern?

• If one does go for the Pro model, is the performance of the wired model better and more consistent than the wireless model to a noticeable degree? The increased performance, if noteworthy, could maybe slightly reduce the caveat(s) mentioned earlier?? Probably not, but still wondering if the wired model would be the way to go if the wireless does occasionally flake out.

For reference, professional daily use centers around programming/coding in desktop IDEs as well as cloud service IDEs within a web browser; web browsing research and articles; daily emails/chats; data scientist oriented apps/tasks; and occasionally diagram generation within a desktop or web browser based diagramming solution. So lots of application GUI navigation going on with most of that. Sporadic hobby use would entail programming/coding; 2D illustration; 3D object creation; audio/music applications such as DAWs; and of course web browsing…with pittance of gaming (RPGs/MMORPGs) thrown in.

Thank you in advance (especially if you read all that!).

Regards,
ajjvn

[jwick]

Being a developer, you may have a unique opportunity to build an optimized solution for your use. (And share it with the community!!)

The current solution isn't so hot. It needs attention to detail, which we never got around to. It just takes the raw device data and applies very simple transformations to it.
I consider it similar to the first IBM TrackPoint solution, which IMO reacted too slowly and then accelerated too quickly. OTOH, IBM/Lenovo made it much better over the years. There is no reason the 3D mouse can not be as good.

The driver has several APIs you can use to tailor your solution. It is not simple by any means, and fairly undocumented, but I'd be very happy to help someone with an incentive to give it more thought. All that is available only on Windows.

There are some very nice emulation programs out there with many parameters which could be useful. I'd look at them if I was starting a new project.

As far as the device is concerned, I would choose a SpaceMouse Enterprise. Not because it is expensive, but for the LCD. You will probably want to make use of the LCD to switch modes and indicate what is going on in those modes. It does unfortunately take up a lot of deskspace. If not that, I'd choose a wireless model for the convenience. The data rate isn't much different, if at all. In fact, the data rate of the device will be a limiting factor that should be worked around.

I'd buy the device from a source where it can be returned if it proves to be a false direction.

To be honest, if you want to use it right out of the box as a 2D mouse replacement, without customization, I'd pass.

[ajjvn]

Thank you for the earnest and through reply, @jwick. I should probably hold off then, for now, and revisit it for its intended uses when I have time for them (3D modeling of assets and/or 3D CAD object creation for 3D printing of parts…unless my teens dive into the 3D printing more/sooner). I’d love the challenge of trying to make it more 2D/traditional mouse-like, but a couple projects would delay that for some time. There are some interesting GIT hub repositories out there. I’ll have to keep any eye on them. I’m sure some AI models might have some interesting suggestions and/or outlooks as well.