September 13, 2006

Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer for Bluetooth on Ubuntu Dapper

Ok, I'm starting to tip back to Ubuntu from SuSE 10.1, though I might try 10 again soon. As the title suggests I have a Microsoft Intellimouse for Bluetooth. There is a little setup that one needs to do to get it to work, but really it is straight forward. Out of the box you can get it to connect and use the scroll wheel and normal buttons, but the forward and back nav buttons don't work. I don't think you can get the wheel tilt buttons to work. So here is my setup:

  • When the mouse goes to sleep after no activity it won't reconnect unless you do the following. Configure bluetooth by editing bluez-utils:

    • sudo vi /etc/default/bluez-utils
    • Change HIDD_ENABLED=0 to HIDD_ENABLED=1
    • Make sure HIDD_OPTIONS="--master --server"


  • Restart bluetooth with sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart

  • Connect the mouse:

    • Push the connect button on the bottom of the mouse for 5 sec.

    • type sudo hidd --search



  • The mouse is now connected and should reconnect after a reboot automatically (give it a few seconds after moving it). Now to get the forward backward buttons working.

  • Edit the xorg.conf file:

    • sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf

    • find the InputDevice section with Driver "mouse" and Option "CorePointer"

    • make sure Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2" exists

    • make sure Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" exists

    • make sure Option "Buttons" "7" exists

    • make sure Option "Emulate3Buttons" "false" exists

    • save file with ESC : wq



  • Setup the buttons by creating the xmodemap file: sudo gedit /etc/X11/Xsession.d/57xmodmap

  • Enter xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3 4 5 8 9 6 7 10 11" then save and exit

  • restart (easiest way to really restart X)

  • on restart your bluetooth mouse should reconnect. Open firefox, then go to a new web page and test the forward and back buttons and the scroll wheel.



I got most of my info by plowing through this thread.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks heaps. Right on!

Anonymous said...

К слову сказать, лучший способ обезопасить человека от шпионских жучков - использовать Подавители мобильных телефонов