pyspacenavigator

3Dconnexion Space Navigator in Python using raw HID (Windows only)

Implements a simple interface to the 6 DoF 3Dconnexion Space Navigator device.

Requires pywinusb to access HID data -- this is Windows only.

Basic Usage:

import spacenavigator
import time

success = spacenavigator.open()
if success:
  while 1:
    state = spacenavigator.read()
    print(state.x, state.y, state.z)
    time.sleep(0.5)

State objects

State objects returned from read() have 7 attributes: [t,x,y,z,roll,pitch,yaw,button].

• t: timestamp in seconds since the script started.
• x,y,z: translations in the range [-1.0, 1.0]
• roll, pitch, yaw: rotations in the range [-1.0, 1.0].
• button: list of button states (0 or 1), in order specified in the device specifier

API

open(callback=None, button_callback=None)      
    Open a 3D space navigator device. Makes this device the current active device, which enables the module-level read() and close()
    calls. For multiple devices, use the read() and close() calls on the returned object instead, and don't use the module-level calls.

    Parameters:        
        callback: If callback is provided, it is called on each HID update with a copy of the current state namedtuple  
        button_callback: If button_callback is provided, it is called on each button push, with the arguments (state_tuple, button_state) 
        device: name of device to open. Must be one of the values in supported_devices. If None, chooses the first supported device found.            
    Returns:
        Device object if the device was opened successfully
        None if the device could not be opened
    
read()              Return a namedtuple giving the current device state (t,x,y,z,roll,pitch,yaw,button)
close()             Close the connection to the current device, if it is open
set_led(state)      Set the status of the current devices LED to either on (True) or off (False)
list_devices()      Return a list of supported devices found, or an empty list if none found

open() returns a DeviceSpec object. If you have multiple 3Dconnexion devices, you can use the object-oriented API to access them individually. Each object has the following API, which functions exactly as the above API, but on a per-device basis:

dev.open()          Opens the connection (this is always called by the module-level open command, 
                    so you should not need to use it unless you have called close())
dev.read()          Return the state of the device as namedtuple [t,x,y,z,roll,pitch,yaw,button]
dev.close()         Close this device
dev.set_led(state)  Set the state of the LED on the device to on (True) or off (False)

There are also attributes:

dev.connected       True if the device is connected, False otherwise
dev.state           Convenience property which returns the same value as read()