VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 26 2002 - 14:49:38 CST

Hi Marc,
  To use a Magellan with VMD, you need to setup a VRPN server first.
Once you've got VRPN up and running with the magellan, and you have
the "analog fly" tracker setup, you should be able to connect to
it from VMD, and use it to control the pointer in VMD.
Make sure that the name of the tracker in your vrpn.cfg etc
matches the name that you use in the .vmdsensors file. The
example we provide with VMD is written like this:

##
## Logicad3D Magellan
## http://www.3dconnexion.com/
##
device magellantracker vrpntracker://geneseo/Tracker0
scale 10
rot left 0 0 -1 0 1 0 1 0 0
device magellanbuttons vrpnbuttons://geneseo/Magellan0

This takes the button events from the raw Magellan tracker device
in VRPN, but takes the motion events from the "analog fly" tracker
we setup in our VRPN configuration.

Let me know if you need more help setting this up.

Thanks,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 03:38:46PM +0100, srtlscao wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to use the Magellan Spacemouse with VMD on SGI IRIX 6.5. I
> have installed VMD w/ the VRPN support, and uncommented the
> corresponding lines in the .vmdsensors file.
> What I dont understand is the USL syntax :
>
> (from documentation)
> "The format for a USL is as follows:
>
> * USL - type://place/name:nums
> * type - the type of sensor (vrpntracker, vrpnbuttons,
> vrpnfeedback, cavetracker, or cavebuttons)
> * place - the machine that controls it. Devices that cannot yet be
> used on arbitrary computers over the network must have the keyword local
> here to be compatible with future versions.
> * name - the name of the device within that machine... "
>
> In the .vmdsensors file, the USL used is :
> vrpntracker://servername/Tracker0 , which doesnt work.
> Should I use instead of "Tracker0" something like ttyd2, /dev/ttyd2, or
> what else ?
> I heard VRPN has a server and a client part, should I care, or is vmd
> itself enough for anything to work?
>
> Thanks
>
> Marc 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349              
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078