How to make a program that finds id's of xinput devices and sets xinput some settings

Question

I have a G700 mouse connected to my computer. The problem with this mouse in Linux (Ubuntu) is that the sensitivity is very high. I also don\'t like mouse acceleration, so I

Answer 1

Currently I am working on a script for a question over at askubuntu.com , which requires something similar, and I thought I'd share the simple python script that does pretty much what this question asks - find device ids and set properties:

The Script

from __future__ import print_function
import subprocess
import sys

def run_cmd(cmdlist):
    """ Reusable function for running shell commands"""
    try:
        stdout = subprocess.check_output(cmdlist)
    except subprocess.CalledProcessError as pserror:
        sys.exit(1)
    else:
        if stdout:
            return stdout.decode().strip()

def list_ids(mouse_name):
    """ Returns list of ids for the same device"""
    while True:
        mouse_ids = []
        for dev_id in run_cmd(['xinput','list','--id-only']).split('\n'):
            if mouse_name in run_cmd(['xinput','list','--name-only',dev_id]):
                mouse_ids.append(dev_id)
        if mouse_ids:
           break
    return mouse_ids

"""dictionary of propery-value pairs"""
props = { 'Device Accel Profile':'-1',
          'Device Accel Constant Deceleration':'2.5',
          'Device Accel Velocity Scaling':'1.0'   }

""" set all property-value pair per each device id
    Uncomment the print function if you wish to know
    which ids have been altered for double-checking
    with xinput list-props"""
for dev_id in list_ids(sys.argv[1]):
    # print(dev_id)
    for prop,value in props.items():
        run_cmd(['xinput','set-prop',dev_id,prop,value]) 

Usage

Provide quoted name of the mouse as first command line argument:

python set_xinput_props.py 'Logitech G700 Laser Mouse'

If everything is OK, script exits silently, with exit status of 0 , or 1 if any xinput command failed. You can uncomment print statement to show which ids are being configured (to later double check with xinput that values are set alright)

How it works:

Essentially, list_ids function lists all device ids , finds those devices that have the same name as user's mouse name and returns a list of those ids. Next we simply loop over each one of them, and of each one we set all the property-value pairs that are defined in props dictionary. Could be done with list of tuples as well, but dictionary is my choice here.