Arch Linux

Ocye

Member

Registered: 2011-12-07

Posts: 29

How to reduce lag of wireless mouse

I attached a wireless mouse (Speelink Axon, 2.4GHz link) recently to my system (MSI GE40 2OC with KDE/Arch) and experience a serious delay now. It becomes striking when I move the pointer quickly to some target - I always overshoot. And measuring with [1] my results are >100ms slower than the average. The mouse is placed next to the dongle (<20cm).

What can I do?

[1] http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: How to reduce lag of wireless mouse

when I move the pointer quickly to some target - I always overshoot.

Presumably you are talking about *acceleration* - so disable it.

Ocye

Member

Registered: 2011-12-07

Posts: 29

Re: How to reduce lag of wireless mouse

No, I'm talking about driver/kernel/link delay. Those settings were the first I played with. Slowing down the cursor speed improves the situation a little, but the actual reason is not solved - and fast movements are still very error-prone.

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: How to reduce lag of wireless mouse

No, I'm talking about driver/kernel/link delay

Polling rate of the mouse (e.g. 250hz, 500hz, 1000hz)? E.g. usbhid.mousepoll=1 in the bootup commandline.

And Nvidia's xorg option makes a noticeable difference to responsiveness:

    # Frames to render - 0 for responsiveness, but 3 (default) for smoothness
    Option "RegistryDwords" "OGL_MaxFramesAllowed=0x0"

I'm not sure how much latency the feature of being wireless will add.

Are you simply expecting too much of a cheapo mouse?

Awebb

Member

Registered: 2010-05-06

Posts: 6,688

Re: How to reduce lag of wireless mouse

I agree with brebs, this sounds like a triple buffered vsync problem.

Ocye

Member

Registered: 2011-12-07

Posts: 29

Re: How to reduce lag of wireless mouse

Are you simply expecting too much of a cheapo mouse?

Am I? Are Logitech's (to just mention one alternative) high end products really better in respect how the kernel deals with data?

Will check buffering this evening. But my system runs on intel chip (although there is a dedicated nvidia chip accessible via bumblebee). And I wonder what triple buffering has to do with the lag of the mouse pointer. Old wired mouse works flawless.

Ocye

Member

Registered: 2011-12-07

Posts: 29

Re: How to reduce lag of wireless mouse

T:  Bus=02 Lev=02 Prnt=02 Port=00 Cnt=01 Dev#=  4 Spd=1.5  MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 1.10 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=1d57 ProdID=0001 Rev=11.10
S:  Manufacturer=2.4G KB
S:  Product=2.4G Mouse
C:* #Ifs= 2 Cfg#= 1 Atr=a0 MxPwr=100mA
I:* If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=03(HID  ) Sub=01 Prot=01 Driver=usbhid
E:  Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS=   8 Ivl=10ms
I:* If#= 1 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=03(HID  ) Sub=01 Prot=02 Driver=usbhid
E:  Ad=82(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS=   8 Ivl=10ms

According https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mouse_polling_rate the lvl value of 10ms stands for 100Hz polling rate, which is quite low. But creating a modprobe.conf with mousepoll=1 and reloading the module doesn't change this value. Guess it's not a *usb*hid device, but Driver says so.

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: How to reduce lag of wireless mouse

And I wonder what triple buffering has to do with the lag of the mouse pointer.

Well, "TripleBuffer" is a *different* option - let's not get confused

Normal screens are 60 frames per second (i.e. 16.6 milliseconds per frame), and Nvidia will, by default, buffer up to 3 frames. That equals an additional delay between you moving your mouse, and you *seeing* the mouse move on the screen, of up to 3*16.6 millseconds. Which is noticeable to gamers.

Old wired mouse works flawless.

Then you probably have a crappy, cheapo wireless mouse which is polling at the slow default of 125hz.

This mouse is reasonable, it supports 250hz.

Ocye

Member

Registered: 2011-12-07

Posts: 29

Re: How to reduce lag of wireless mouse

The evhz tool reports "Average for 2.4G KB 2.4G Mouse:   120Hz". Same values for the old mouse but no delay. In the mentioned reaction test I'm a little bit faster compared to windows.

T:  Bus=02 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=01 Cnt=01 Dev#=  9 Spd=1.5  MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 1.10 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=045e ProdID=0040 Rev= 1.21
S:  Manufacturer=Microsoft
S:  Product=Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical®
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=a0 MxPwr=100mA
I:* If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=03(HID  ) Sub=01 Prot=02 Driver=usbhid
E:  Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS=   4 Ivl=10ms

Ocye

Member

Registered: 2011-12-07

Posts: 29

Re: How to reduce lag of wireless mouse

And one more addition: I connected the dongle via USB hub having as well a G15 keyboard connected (>1 hid device) there (right side USB 2.0). After moving it to a separate port the mouse runs smoothly (left side USB 3.0). So what happens here? ;-)

Awebb

Member

Registered: 2010-05-06

Posts: 6,688

Re: How to reduce lag of wireless mouse

1. The polling rate is the USB polling rate. If wireless signals from the mouse reach the dongle they are either being stored until the next poll or dropped entirely The wired mouse doesn't have issues like this.
2. The USB hub info would have been helpful in the beginning. I had to increase the polling rate of my keyboard once, because the hub sucked.
3. The G15, like all the Logitech products, want world domination and start by polling the crap out of your port.

I think your USB hub smells.