Mobile Air Mouse

iPhone/iPod

iPad

Installation

The first step is to install the server application on your computer so that the Mobile Air Mouse app can connect to it. Please follow the installation instructions below.

Mac OS X

Windows

Download the server from our web site by clicking the appropriate link on the bottom of the homepage under Downloads.
Copy the Air Mouse server application into your Applications folder.
Run the Air Mouse Server.
If you are prompted by your firewall or any antivirus software to block this program, please make sure you select to allow the connection.

Download the installer from our web site by clicking the appropriate link on the bottom of the homepage under Downloads.
Run the setup.exe file and follow each screen through until the end.
The installer should automatically start the server, but if it doesn't, run it by hand by going into the Air Mouse folder under program files.
If you are prompted by your firewall or any antivirus software to block this program, please make sure you select to allow the connection.

After you install the server on your computer, please run the app on your device. It should automatically connect when it starts up. However, if it does not connect and remains in the "Searching" state, there is most likely something on your network or computer that is preventing it from connecting. If that is the case, please refer to our troubleshooting section and forums for help getting it to connect.

Server Setup

Mac OS X	Windows

Once you start Air Mouse, you will see an icon of a mouse on your menu bar if you are running a Mac, or an icon in your system tray if you are on a PC. To access the server settings, click the menu item on the Mac menu bar, or double click on the icon in the system tray. To quit the server, simply select Quit from the menu items on the Mac, or right click on the icon in the system tray on a PC.

Testing the connection

We recommend that before you purchase the app from the app store you run this simple test to make sure that your iPhone can connect to the server properly. To do this, please open Safari on your iPhone or iPod touch and enter the following url:

connect.mobileairmouse.com
Once the page loads on Safari, simply enter the IP and port number that are shown on the server and tap the connect button. If you are unable to connect, please refer to the troubleshooting steps below and the forum for help. If you are unable to connect using this page, the app won't be able to connect either.

Server Settings

Mac OS X	Windows

The Server tab contains all the settings related to networking the application.

The IP field shows the current IP that the server is listening on. In some cases you may need it to listen on a different IP, in which case you can select another IP from the list if there are multiple IPs available. If you select a specific IP, you must also uncheck the "Listen on any" checkbox.
The Port field specifies which port the server is currently listening on. There may not be any reason to change this unless it conflicts with a port that another program is listening on, or the port is higher than the permitted port range on your computer. After you change the port number and click apply, the server will restart with the new port settings. Please make sure that if you have a firewall that was set to your previous port, that you change this to the new port also.
The Pass field allows you to specify a password that is required for anyone who tries to connect to your computer. This can be left blank if you do not need to require one. Once a device connects once, they won't br prompted to enter it again. If you want to disable devices that connected before, just change the password.

The Air Motion tab specifies the motion settings for the in-air mouse control.

The Pointer Speed sliders specify the x and y speed of the movement.
The Acceleration slider adds extra distance to your movements by increasing the distance the mouse moves on the screen when you make quicker movements, and decreases the amount for slower movements. This will allow you to move across the length of a larger monitor by moving your hand quicker, but will also allow you to perform tasks like clicking buttons or links by moving your hand slower. You can fine tune the amount of acceleration added by moving the slider.

The Touch Motion tab specifies the motion settings for the trackpad control.

The Pointer Speed sliders specify the speed of the movement.
The Acceleration slder adds extra distance to your movements by increasing the distance the mouse moves on the screen when you make quicker movements, and decreases the amount for slower movements. This will allow you to move across the length of a larger monitor by moving your hand quicker, but will also you to perform tasks like clicking buttons or links by moving your hand slower. You can fine tune the amount of acceleration added by moving the slider.

The Scrolling tab specifies the speed settings for the scrollpad.

The X slider specify the speed of horizontal scrolling. (Please note that horizontal scrolling isn't available on every OS/program).
The Y slider specify the speed of vertical scrolling.

Program Setup

By default, the server is set up for the most common Media and Web applications for your operating system. As we develop new application remotes, they will be automatically downloaded onto your server every day. However, if we are missing the media app you need to control, you can easily create a remote for it through the server. To do this, click the "Program List" button on the main server screen. In the program list, you will see a list of Managed Programs and a list of User Defined Programs. The managed programs are the ones that are downloaded and maintained by us. The user defined programs are the ones that are created and maintained by you. If you want to use your own settings for a program that is on the managed programs list, just uncheck it from this list after you have created your own defninition for that application.

To add a new application, click on the Add button and select the executable. Once you have selected it, you will be presented with all the buttons that are available for that type of program. You can either set a keyboard combination to trigger that action in the program you are controlling, or you can write a script (Applescript on the Mac, VBScript on the PC) to do it. For Media applications, there are 8 additional custom keys that you can name and program to control any additional actions that are not covered by the main buttons. Also, for Media applications, you can check off the "Enable scroll pad navigation" option. When checked off, this option will allow you to use the scroll pad to nagivate programs which use arrow keys to navigate their menus (please see our demo video for examples).

Mouse (Touch Pad)

The first option for controlling your computer is to use this touch pad. This works the same as the touch pad on your laptop. It can be used in vertical mode with the keyboard showing or hidden, or in landscape mode by rotating your iPhone. The buttons are as follows:

Settings: Click to access the preferences
Swap View: Click to switch to the accelerometer based control
Touch Pad: Move your thumb anywhere over this surface to control your mouse movement. As long as your movement originates in this space, you can utilize the entire space, even if you are moving your finger over the buttons and keyboard. Tapping quickly on the pad will activate a mouse click.
Scroll Pad: Run your finger up and down, or left and right to scroll within your current application.
Left Mouse Button: This will activate a left mouse button click. Additionally, if you hold this button down and move your finger onto the touch pad, you can move the mouse with the mouse button down.
Right Mouse Button. This will activate a right mouse button click.

The trackpad also responds to some multitouch gestures just like your MacBook. To scroll, just use two fingers on the trackpad to scroll in any direction. To perform a right click, single tap with two fingers on the touch pad.

Mouse (Accelerometer)

The next option for controlling your computer is to use the accelerometer mode. In this mode, you will use your hand movement to control your mouse. Just point your device at your computer, then holding down the trigger, move your hand around as if you were using a laser pointer and the mouse will follow. The buttons are as follows:

Settings: Click to access the preferences
Swap View: Click to switch to the touch pad control
Trigger: Holding this button activates the mouse movements. Keep it held down as long as you want to move the mouse. You can pull your thumb off it, move the mouse back, then press it again to gain more movement space. You can also tap the trigger quickly to activate a mouse click.
Scroll Pad: Run your thumb up and down over this part to activate scrolling.
Left Mouse Button: This will activate a left mouse button click. Additionally, if you hold this button down, it will also activate the trigger. This is useful if you want to click and drag something or highlight some text.
Right Mouse Button. This will activate a right mouse button click. Additionally, if you hold this button down, it will also activate the trigger.

Keyboard

The keyboard can be used to type on your computer. It can be used in both vertical and horzontal modes. As you type on your iPhone, the letters will be typed in real time on your computer as well as on the screen of the app. You can type a Tab key by double tapping the Return key. Directly above the keyboard are 3 modifier keys. These are the same that you would find on your desktop keyboard. Ctrl, Win, Alt on the PC and Ctrl, Option, Command on the Mac. The modifier keys will change to the appropriate keys when you connect to your computer. These can be used to perform keyboard shortcuts, such as creating a new document by hitting Command-N. These keys also work for mouse click, so if you wanted to open a new tab in a web browser you could press the necessary modifier key and click on a link. Modifier clicks don't work in every program though, so your results may vary. To the right of the 3 modifier keys is a minimize button. This will hide the main keys and show the function, media and web keys. If you want to hide the keyboard completely in order to have the entire screen as a trackpad, just shake the phone in a downward motion and it will slide away. To bring it back, just shake your phone in an upward direction. When you are in landscape mode, the keyboard is hidden by default. Just shake the device to bring up the landscape keyboard.

Application Switcher

The application switcher offers you a way to launch any of your favorite programs, as well as switch between all your running applications and perform different actions on any of them. If you are on a Mac, all the icons on your Dock will appear. On Windows XP/Vista, you will see all your running programs as well as your Quick Launch items. If you are running Windows 7, you will also see any programs that are pinned to the taskbar.

Run your finger over the icons to see the full size icon and application title on the iPhone screen as well as on your computer screen. To switch to or run an application, simply tap the icon. If you hold your finger on an icon for a couple seconds, you will get a popup menu to Close/Hide a running application, or Open a program which isn't running. Keeping your finger down, just drag your finger over the menu to select the option you want. If you hold your finger on the OS icon (the first icon in the upper left hand corner), you will be given the option to shutdown the computer or put it to sleep.

Media Mode

The media keys screen contains all the most common buttons that you will need to control all your media apps. The middle button is used to play/pause your media tracks. On either side is a Back and Next button, for going to the next or previous tracks. If you double tap the Next/Back buttons they will be used to Forward or Rewind your media. Above and below the play/pause button is the +/- buttons, which are typically used to change channels, or to adjust the volume of the application. On the left and right of the screen are 8 custom buttons. The functionality of these buttons will change based on the program you use, or may not have any functionality for certain programs. Along the bottom are buttons for volume up/down and mute. These control the volume of the system, not the application. In the middle is a Menu button, which has many purposes that vary depending on what program you are running. On the right is a # button, which brings up a numeric keyboard that is most commonly used to change channels. Lastly is the eject button, which ejects any media currently in your drive.

The media screen will automatically come up anytime you are using a media program that has itself set up in the server settings. Additionally, you can quickly switch back to the last most recently run media program by pressing the music note button on the toolbar. This button will only activate a media program if you were already running one, it will not launch your media programs.

Web Mode

The web keys screen contains all the most common buttons to control all your web browsers. The top row of buttons contain Back, Search, Home and Next buttons. The second row of buttons contain Reload, Stop, Bookmarks. Along the buttom of this screen are +/- buttons, which most commonly act as the zoom in/out buttons. In the center is the Open button, which will set the focus to the Location field on your browser and bring up a URL keyboard on your iPhone.

Function Keys

The function key screen contains all the function keys you would find on your regular desktop keyboard as well as an Escape key, Delete, Home, End, Page Up, Page Down and arrow keys. These keys also respond to the modifier keys. Above the function keys are 4 customizable hot keys. These are set up in the server settings by clicking the Function button. They can be named and assigned to run a program or perform a keyboard shortcut. In addition to the 4 hot keys, the scroll pad is also a programmable hot key, which can be configured in the Function screen too.

App Settings

Server List: When you first run the app, it will automatically try to find and connect to the first available server it finds. If it is unable to do so, you may need to manually select the server from this list. If there are none available, it will display a message saying that it is searching. While it is searching, please make sure that your server is running and is not blocked by any firewalls or antivirus software. When you see your server listed, click on the server name to connect. If you are running multiple servers on the same network, this list will show them. You can use this screen to switch between them at an time. If you are unable to connect to your server, please follow the troubleshooting steps below.

IP: The IP/Port fields can be used to manually enter an IP that you wish to connect to. Any time you have an IP and Port in these fields, you will automatically be connected to that computer each time and it will ignore the servers in the list. If you want to go back to using a server in the list, just erase the IP and Port completely so that they say "Auto" in each field. Manually entering the IP can be used to connect to computer which aren't running Bonjour, or to connected to your computer over the Internet.

Sound: This switch can be used to disable all the sounds in the app.

Sleep: This switch controls whether the device is allowed to sleep while the app is running. By default this is on, turn it off and the device will never go to sleep while the app is running. This is useful when you're giving a presentation, but otherwise should be used with caution as to not drain your battery.

Force Vertical:When this switch is in the On position, it will prevent the orientation of the trackpad from switching to landscape mode when the device is turned sideway.

Key Buffer:When this switch is in the On position, any keys you type will be buffered to the screen before they are sent to your computer. This is useful if you want to see everything you type before you send it, or if you want to use the device's built in spell correction. This feature should also be turned on if you are using a foreign language keyboard that combines characters as you type them, such as a Korean keyboard.

Frequency: The Frequency slider sets the update frequency of the accelerometer. Increasing this value will provider greater sensitivity, but can also make the mouse harder to control if it's set too high. Lowering this value can provide more precise control, but lowering it too much will make your mouse movement choppy. We suggest you leave it as is and only adjust it if you are experiencing trouble controlling your mouse.

Wake On Lan

When you first connect to your computer, if the computer is sleeping, the app will attempt to wake it. However if it was unable to wake it, or you want to wake a different computer, press the power icon in the upper left hand screen of the app preference. A list of all the servers that you have connected to will come up and you can select which server you want to attempt to wake.

Please note that wake on lan requires that your computer be connected to your router using an ethernet cable. Many computers may require additional setup to support wake on lan. Our app simply sends a wake on lan packet to your computer, if your computer does not wake up, you will need to troubleshoot this on your own since this has to do with the configuration of your computer.

Tips & Tricks

Movement

If you have never used an in air mouse before, the first thing to keep in mind is that it can take time to get used to the movement and get good good at controlling your mouse.

If you have used an in air mouse before, you will notice that the Air Mouse app works a little different than what you might be used to. The iPhone's accelerometer can only track the pitch and roll of the device. Because of that, moving the iPhone from side to side will do very little to move the mouse horizontally. Instead, you must tilt the phone over the horizontal axis to move the mouse left and right, as shown below. The air mouse option is not meant for use in close range. If you are trying to navigate your computer while sitting right in front of it, you will notice very inaccurate movement. Instead, step back a few feet and extend your arm out slightly so that you can use longer, smoother movements. If you plan to work within close range of your computer, we suggest using the touchpad option.

Air Mouse

1) To move the mouse up and down on the screen, simply tilt the iPhone up and down in the air.
2) To move the mouse left to right, the first method is to use a long arcing motion.
3) To make quicker movements from left to right, hold your hand still and twist your wrist.

Track pad

You might be thinking that the track pad and scroll pad area is too small to be useful. However, this is not the case, because the scroll area is just a starting point to activate scrolling. Once you click inside this area, you can move your finger across the entire screen, over the trackpad, other buttons, and even over the keyboard. Once you initiate scrolling, the app will ignore anything you move your finger over, and use the entire front screen for scrolling. This is also true for the track pad, once you initiate your movement, you can use the whole screen. You also have the option to hide the keyboard or use multitouch gestures to activate scrolling if these are still too small.

Troubleshooting

We have listed all the most common problems users are encountering. Unless you are getting a runtime error, the problem is almost always related to a networking problem. Please check every step very carefully, because the majority of problems that users contact us about can be resolved by one of the steps below. If you have gone through all these steps and are still having problems, please contact us immediately and we would be happy to help you get it working. We see many people posting their questions and problems in the iTunes review section. Unfortunately there is no way for us or anyone else to respond to your questions there, so please contact us directly.

I'm moving my iPhone, but my mouse doesn't move:
- Make sure you hold down the trigger while moving your hand, or your movements will not get sent to your computer.
- Make sure that the server app is installed and running.
- When you first installed the software, did you allow the server to accept incoming connections?
- Check if you have any antivirus software installed or if you are running a firewall. If you do, disable it temporarily to see if that resolves the problem. If it does you will need to add an exception for the Air Mouse server to run.
- Make sure that your iPhone is connected to a WIFI connection
- Make sure that the WIFI network that your iPhone is connected to is the same network that your computer is connected to.
- Open the Air Mouse server preferences and try entering a different port number, such as 9099, then click apply.

The server all of a sudden stopped tracking my movement.
- Verify that your IP address hasn't changed
- Quit the iPhone Air Mouse app and start it up again.
- Reselect your server under that Air Mouse app settings.
On my Mac, I can't use the zoom feature, or when I'm zoomed in, the screen doesn't follow the mouse around as I move
- Please go to System Preferences->Universal Access and make sure that the radio button under Zoom is set to On. Then make sure "Enable access for assistive devices" is checked too. Make sure that you are using the Command key modifier to activate zooming, and using the scroll pad to zoom in and out.
- Please update the Air Mouse server software to the newest version if you can't move your mouse around.
- In order to get the screen to follow your pointer, please go to System Preferences->Universal Access. Then click on the Options button under the Zoom section. In the 2nd to last section on the screen, make sure to select the radio button that says "So the pointer is at or near the center of the image"

The Mobile Air Mouse iPhone app suddenly quit
- This can be due to a shortage of free memory on your iPhone. If this happens repeatedly, please restart your iPhone by holding down the sleep and home key at the same time to free up some memory.

I get one of the following runtime errors when the program starts in Windows:
"The application failed to initialize properly (0xc000135). Click on OK to terminate the application"
or
"To run this application, you first must install one of the following versions of the .NET framework: v2.0.50727"
- This is because you don't have the Microsoft .NET framework on your computer.
  Please download and install it from here
  * If you have a 64 bit PC, please make sure you select the x64 download

My keyboard does not work
- Check the status message on the server and make sure that it is showing a message when you are typing
- If you are using a non-English keyboard, we currently do not suppport all languages in OS X 10.4, it is doubtful that there will be a fix for this.

My hotkeys or keyboard shortcuts don't work
- If you are running Windows Vista, please check to see if you have UAC enabled, if it is disabled, then keyboard shortcuts won't work. This is a security limitation of the OS to prevent malicious applications from causing harm to your computer when they cannot be verified though UAC. The options to resolve this are to either enable UAC, or to run this Air Mouse server as an administrator.

If all else fails, please use our contact form to submit a support request and we will be happy to help you get it running. Please be sure to include the following information: Are you running a Mac or PC? What version of the OS are you running? What processor do you have (Intel, 64bit, PPC, ect)? What steps have you tried so far to get the software running?

If you find a bug or have a feature request, please send us an email.

FAQ

Can I use this over Bluetooth?
- Despite the addition of Bluetooth pairing between iPhones in version 3.0, there is still no integration possible between the iPhone and a desktop application. However, in OS 3.0 there is a new feature called Internet tethering. Using this feature, you can use Air Mouse over Bluetooth in the same way it currently runs over WIFI. This is not supported by all carriers yet, so please check your carriers availability for this feature. Specifically if you are in the USA, AT&T has not yet announced information regarding the availability or pricing.
- An alternative, which seems to work just as well is to set up an ad hoc wireless network. We have created a page with instructions on how to set this up here.

Does this work with Apple TV?
- Yes, there are two solutions. aTV Flash and Patchstick have integrated Mobile Air Mouse into their Apple TV products, which will allow you to control parts of Apple TV with Mobile Air Mouse.

Does this work with Playstation 3?
- Unfortunately no. There is currently no way of developing software for this platforms. If/when the time comes that they open this platform to the developer community, we will gladly develop a version of for it.

Is there a Linux version available or on the way?
- Currently we do not have a version for Linux. We will be releasing one in the future but do not have an estimated time frame yet.

Can I become a beta tester?
- Yes! If you would like to help beta test new versions of the iPhone and server apps, please send us an email letting us know that you'd like to help test. Please include the OS you are running as well as your 40 character iPhone Identifier (you can find this by running iTunes with your iPhone connected, then going to the summary panel of the iPhone, and clicking on the Serial Number field to reveal the identifier). We have a limit on how many we can accept so it will be on a first come, first serve basis and you have to have already bought the app to participate.
Why can't this work like a real mouse, where I can just slide the phone around the table to move the mouse?
- There is no way to track side to side movement using the iPhone accelerometer or the camera (we've tried). This mouse is intended for in air use only, in situations where you don't have a table to work on. It's not possible to make it as accurate as a real mouse, nor is it meant to replace a real mouse.