CheckingMTDevice

Revision 9 as of 2011-01-13 00:33:17

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Finding out your multi-touch device ID

Using the lsinput command you can check what input device corresponds to your multi-touch device. lsinput is part of the input-utils package which is not installed by default. To install it, just do the following: 

 $ sudo apt-get install input-utils

Then you can run it: 

 $ sudo lsinput

Apple Magic Trackpad

Here is sample output for an Apple Magic Trackpad: 

...
/dev/input/event7
   bustype : BUS_BLUETOOTH
   vendor  : 0x5ac
   product : 0x30e
   version : 352
   name    : "Apple Wireless Trackpad"
   phys    : "XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX"
   uniq    : "XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX"
   bits ev : EV_SYN EV_KEY EV_REL EV_MSC
...

On this system, the MT device input node is /dev/input/event7.

N-trig-based Devices

There are actually three inputs for the N-trig hardware. The one that is used for multitouch is named "N-Trig MultiTouch". Here is some sample output: 

...
/dev/input/event10
   bustype : BUS_USB
   vendor  : 0x1b96
   product : 0x1
   version : 272
   name    : "N-Trig MultiTouch"
   phys    : "usb-0000:00:1d.0-1.8/input1"
   uniq    : ""
   bits ev : EV_SYN EV_KEY EV_ABS
...

On this system, the MT device input node is /dev/input/event10.

Testing multi-touch input activity

To test for multi-touch input, you will then need to use mtdev-test which is part of the mtdev-tools package. This package is not installed by default. 

 $ sudo apt-get install mtdev-tools

Here is an example of testing output with mtdev-test: 

 $ sudo mtdev-test /dev/input/event7

012a7c6adc9d 00 2 0001 -1
012a7c6adc9d 00 0 0000 0
012a7c6adfc7 00 4 0004 589825
012a7c6adfc7 00 1 0110 1
012a7c6adfc7 00 0 0000 0
012a7c6ae075 00 4 0004 589825
012a7c6ae075 00 1 0110 0
012a7c6ae075 00 0 0000 0
012a7c6ae2f6 00 4 0004 589825
012a7c6ae2f6 00 1 0110 1
012a7c6ae2f6 00 0 0000 0
012a7c6ae388 00 4 0004 589825
012a7c6ae388 00 1 0110 0
012a7c6ae388 00 0 0000 0