rspeele / mousechef

A graphical program for viewing and analyzing logs of mouse movement.

MouseChef

This is a program which reports some nice stats about mice.

The idea is that you take two mice, tape them together like a mad scientist, and move them around as a unit.

Since they're recording the same physical motions, you can safely compare the events they reported to the operating system to know the exact DPI ratio between the two mice.

Example:

• Mouse A moved 5 units on the x axis and 10 units on the y axis.
• In the same time period, mouse B reported 20 units on the x axis and 40 units on the y axis.
• Therefore, mouse B's DPI is 4 times higher than mouse A's.

You can also use this technique to detect input lag or whether a mouse has built-in acceleration (compared to another mouse).

How to get it

You can download a zip of the latest release from the releases tab.

How to use it

First, tape your mice together. It doesn't have to be a rock solid connection. As long as they move together without slipping around relative to one another, you should be fine. Painter's tape is good for not leaving too much sticky residue.

Next, start up MouseChef.exe and hit ctrl+space to start recording input. Move the two mice around. Try slow movements, fast movements, both axes, stopping and starting, whatever you can think of.

Whatever you do, don't rotate the taped together mice. That will ruin everything, because unless the center of rotation is exactly at the midpoint of the two sensors, they'll move different distances. In the worst case scenario, if you rotate perfectly around the sensor of one mouse, it won't pick up any movement at all while the other mouse will pick up a lot of movement.

The following diagram demonstrates this problem:

Once you've recorded enough input, just hit ctrl+space again to stop recording. Now you can play around with the UI.