Tremor Mouse: first Alpha release announcement

It is early days, but we have made progress on the Tremor Mouse adapter. We are using an Adafruit RP2040 USB Host device.   As you can see from the photograph, it has two USB connectors.  You plug your mouse into the USB ‘A’ connector and you plug a cable from your computer into the USB C connector.  Yes, it’s plug and play.  No software to install and it comes pre-configured.  

At present, the configuration needs to be set by a programmer before the software is compiled.  Later versions will have a web interface to allow you to customize the settings so it best suits your needs.

The first Alpha release of the software is ready. If you want to test it out, the pre-compiled software is available here.  The source code is also available for those of you who are a bit more adventurous. You can change the configuration settings and compile your own personal configuration using the Arduino IDE.

This first release only attenuates the speed of mouse movements.  The majority of the time, the mouse needs to move relatively quickly to get to some target destination and precision is not required.  During these faster movements, there is no attenuation of the mouse.  As you approach your target, you usually slow down.  At this slower speed, the mouse is attenuated by 2:1, filtering out some of you tremors.  When you get very close to the target you slow down even more and the attenuation is set at 4:1.  These values are fixed for now, but seem to be about right for someone with mild to moderate Essential Tremors of the hand/forearm.  Testing will refine these values.

This is just the first feature.  More will be released as the project develops.

Credit where credit is due.  This project wouldn’t be possible without Ha Thach and TinyUSB, Adafruit who built the hardware and provided s/w to build applications with the Arduino IDE.  And a big thank you goes to BillB of AtMakers.org who developed the original hardware, pushed it through a couple of generations of refinements and somehow persuaded LadyAda to build and source this board that we are using.

If you want to test drive the Tremor Mouse, please contact me here or over on Reddit  and I will be happy to walk you through the process of getting it working.  Your feedback will help us refine the configuration and perhaps suggest other modifications to make it easier to work with the Tremor Mouse.

If you are a ‘C’ programmer and interested in contributing to the development process, please chime in here in the comments, or the Discussions and/or Issues on github.