Contents:
• Summary
• Advantages
• Disadvantages
This video on YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If-jkWIa1mg
Summary
Idea: 1997.First prototype: 2003.
Made with aid of 4 others.
Rotating left-right motion by a horizontal ball bearing.
Front up-down tilting motion by a vertical door hinge.
An optical mouse on the front side of the right pedal moves along a concave surface.
Concave shape (the opposite of a sphere): made of construction foam (PU-foam).
Wood: plywood, 10 mm thickness.
The right foot controls the position of the cursor.
The left foot controls four mouse buttons.
The details of my footmouse are on the details page.
Advantages
• It relieves the neck.• There is no need to lift the hand to change between the mouse and the keyboard.
• It is possible to type and move cursor around, at the same time.
• The position of the right foot defines directly the position of the cursor. That is much more efficient than setting a speed and a direction for the cursor.
• The weight of the feet and legs always rest fully on the pedals. There is never any need to lift a foot to move it around.
• There is almost no practice time necessary, the foot motion is in a natural way. Only precise motions need a number of weeks to practice. After that the mouse speed in the mouse driver can be set higher, which is more convenient.
• The footmouse on its own can be used to control the computer. But it is however better to have more input devices, like an ordinary mouse, a trackball, keyboard, speech recognition, pen-tablet, etc.
Disadvantages
• The legs can't be stretched. Because at that moment it is not possible to control the cursor, and you need to place your feet properly on the footmouse again.• It increases the muscle tension in the legs. This reduces the blood flow and might increase the risk of thrombus.
• It is slower than an ordinary mouse, and it is less accurate.
• The cursor on the screen is sometimes stuck to a side while the right pedal is in the middle position. So the right foot has the move far in a direction to get the cursor somewhere in the middle of the screen. This is a minor problem. After a while you don't even have to think about it.
• There is no scroll-wheel. There are ways to add one, but I don't know a good solution yet.
If you want to build your own footmouse, check the details page.
Last change to this page: October 2016