ZeleSouris Wireless Vertical Mouse and Linux

This is a quick review of the ZeleSouris Vertical Mouse and a guide to setting it up on Linux.

Four years ago, I got the latest Evoluent Vertical Mouse. It's a great device, but it's starting to show its age a bit.

So, time for a new model. I'm doing a lot of travelling, so a wireless mouse is a must. Sadly, the Evoluent Wireless Mouse is £75. As good as their mice are, I wanted something cheaper - so I wouldn't feel terrible if I lost it or got damaged.

At around £25, the ZeleSouris looks like just the job. It's vertical, wireless, and has thumb buttons.

The ZeleSouris is incredibly light with well placed buttons for larger hands. I found the middle click button to be slightly stiff, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

As a vertical mouse, it does its job admirably - and at a very reasonable price.

It has an integrated wrist rest - which is detachable. Personally, I find it comfortable. I also like the plastic ridging on the side - makes it a lot easier to grip than the smooth Evoluent.

Talking of the Evoluent, the ZeleSouris is roughly the same size:

The mouse works flawlessly - I plugged the dongle in to a Linux machine and it just worked. I assume it will also work on Mac and Windows.

The only downside is that the dongle doesn't use BlueTooth. Instead, you get a proprietary 2.4GHz wireless adapter.

Although the dongle doesn't jut out too far from a laptop, it seems daft not to use BlueTooth - especially given that every computer and phone now has it built in. It also means you don't get to monitor the battery life - and it introduces some (theoretical) eavesdropping concerns.

The dongle has a little carrying hole in the bottom of the mouse - it's not spring loaded, but it's tight enough that it won't accidentally drop out.

Let's take a look at the bottom of the mouse:

The battery compartment takes 2 AAA batteries - which are included).

There's a an on/off switch. Not too fiddly - but I think it could have been placed on the top of the mouse rather than the seldom-used DPI button.

The DPI button on the top should change the speed at which the mouse moves. On the Evoluent, it's really noticeable. On the ZeleSouris, it doesn't seem to make much difference. There's no status LED to tell you which setting it is on.

As a minor point of interest, the mouse is actually a re-badged Delux DLM-618 if you're looking for alternate reviews.

Linux Button Remapping

A quick lsusb gives the device ID of 279e:024e.

By default, the button mapping is:

1   Left Click (Index Finger)
2   Middle Click (Middle Finger)
3   Right Click (Ring Finger)
...
8   Bottom Thumb
9   Top Thumb

Running xinput list shows that the wireless adapter registers as both a keyboard and a mouse. Very odd!

⎡ Virtual core pointer		      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ 2.4G wireless USB Device 2.4G wireless USB Device id=13   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard		     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ 2.4G wireless USB Device 2.4G wireless USB Device id=14   [slave  keyboard (3)]

I like to have the bottom thumb be the left-click. The lazy way of customising this is

xinput set-button-map 13 0 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 0 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

That turns off the Index Finger and Top Thumb, and assigns Left-Click to the Bottom Thumb.

sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/91-zelesouris.conf

Use the following as a template

Section "InputClass"
	Identifier      "ZeleSouris"
	MatchUSBID      "279e:024e"
	Option "ButtonMapping" "0 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 0 10 11 12 13 14 15 16"
EndSection

Reboot and your button mapping will take effect.