The ergonomic hardware I use to counter my RSI

Wouter Bos — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:28:00 +0000

In the article “How I cope with RSI” I promised to review my hardware. So here they are.

Logitech Marble Mouse

One of the most common non-standard mouse I know. It’s popularity is deserved to a certain degree, at least for me. The RSI-problem is mostly in my hand and I have the most trouble with clicking mouse buttons and holding my hand on a standard mouse.

Both these problems are solved with this trackball. Because of the positioning of the buttons I don’t rely on my overused index finger to click. Most of the time I use my thumb.

Since you can’t rest your hand on the Marble Mouse, you have to lift your whole hand. So I’m not resting my hand on the trackball that much. This position is slightly better than holding a normal mouse, but it’s still far from perfect. That’s why I use the trackball for with best hand, the left hand. The best thing about the trackball is it’s price, which is much more reasonable than most other “RSI-safe” devices.

It is a wired mouse by the way, as are all other devices I use. I hate to replace batteries.

E-Quill AirO2bic

The E-Quill-AirO2bic™ Grip-Less™ mouse

One problem with a normal mouse is that I cannot rest my hand on the mouse. Because of that, there’s always a bit of tension in my hand. Even when I’m just holding the mouse for a short while. The AirO2bic mouse (stupid name for a mouse) is the perfect solution for that problem because I can really rest my hand in the mouse. My problem with mouse clicks on the other hand isn’t solved at all. I still have to press the button with my index finger.

A minor issue is the size of the mouse: normal mouse pads aren’t large enough. I had to buy a large gaming mouse pad in order to have enough space to move around.

Since the Quill in essence is just a normal mouse that’s tilted on its side, I never had problems with installing drivers. That’s worth something too. It’s something that I learned to value with my foot pedal.

Kinesis Savant Elite foot pedal

Savant Elite Dual Action Foot Switch

I earned a reputation with this gear. When people were baffled because I have 2 special mice and one regular mouse for visitors, I showed them the Savant Elite my foot pedal under my desk. You should see their faces

I bought the pedal because the Quill didn’t solve my problem with mouse clicks, which I still had to do with my index finger. Although the foot pedal helped, it wasn’t what I hoped for. Clicking with your foot is not as easy as it might appear. Double clicks were possible but felt very awkward since I discovered that a foot has less dexterity than a hand. I also had trouble to place my foot properly. You can’t rest your foot too hard on the pedal as you might accidentally do a mouse click. Keeping your foot a bit lifted on the other hand isn’t good either. In the end I used the pedal only for dragging actions.

The foot pedal also had some issues. It had 2 buttons that could be programmed to do all kinds of stuff and on at least 2 occasions that created problems. The pedal buttons would not work or weird events would be attached to it like “page down”. Resetting the hardware through special software solved that problem. After about 3 years it stopped working and a reset didn’t help either. Although I’m not totally happy with the product, I must say that the support was great.

Keyboard

Because I had a mouse on either side of my keyboard I was advised to buy a small keyboard. That way I didn’t have to stretch. I must say: If I wasn’t given that advise, I would never have bought such a keyboard myself since I would probably wouldn’t recognize it as an issue. But the reasoning seems sound, so I stuck with it.

Think of your own hardware: exercise

There are lots of solutions on the market to help you cope with RSI. And although a good workspace arrangement helps, exercise really helped me the best in getting back on track. So I have no illusions that my problems can be solved by hardware only.

How I cope with RSI

How I cope with RSI

Wouter Bos — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:28:28 +0000

Although I spent a lot of time in my youth behind the computer, I never got problems with my hands until I got my first job. RSI was relatively new back in 2000 and not something I’d be suffering. At least: that’s what I thought. Until my right hand started to feel sore. At first it was just a little but after some time it was getting really annoying and hindering my work.

RSI creeping in

At some point I started to use the mouse in my left hand although I’m right handed. It felt awkward at first, but I got used to it that same day i switched. Now my left hand, which didn’t do much with the mouse until then, had to do all the work. No wonder that within days my left hand was just as sore as the right one. I switched the mouse from left hand to right hand until I realized that I had to switch within minutes and got a second mouse.

One mouse for every hand worked reasonably well. My work was then still split between journalism and building websites so I wasn’t behind my desk all day long. Those breaks gave me some time to recover. But I liked web development much more than journalism, so I switched jobs in order to be a full time web developer. It also meant full time behind a computer.

Reality kicked in

After about 2 years of web development I came to the conclusion that I had to do more. To be more precise: after a work week I had both my hands in a bucket of warm water in a fruitless attempt to stimulate the blood circulation in my hands. One of the first things I did was giving up a holiday in order to work only half days for a few weeks. That gave my hands some rest without me falling into a black hole.

The second thing I did was going to the doctor. It was hard for me to go to the doctor because there was nothing to see on the outside. I don’t think the doctor wasn’t convinced either because he wanted to test me for carpal syndrome which I don’t have. And I almost don’t have any trouble with my arms or shoulders. My problem is specifically in the back of my hands. He sent me to a physiotherapist anyway.

The remedy

The physiotherapist emphasized on exercise. That would help with the blood circulation with my hands. Although I didn’t buy his story completely I tried it anyway and it worked. The only trouble was the frequency of the exercise. I was (if I’m correctly) only 2 times a week in the gym and I didn’t want to pay to be able to exercise more in the gym.

So I stopped the therapy prematurely and started jogging, which I do ever since. Although reluctantly. At some time I substituted some of the jogging with tai chi, which worked reasonably well. At another time I completely replaced jogging when each day it took me about 1:40 hours to go to my work and back by bicycle.

I also sometimes stopped doing the exercise because I don’t always like to do it and because sometimes other matters seem more important. The problems with my hands will automatically flare up again and so I have to go back to my exercises. I always say that in some wicked way RSI has been a blessing in disguise because it’s my main motivator to keep healthy and fit.

So what finally helped was a combination of exercise and special input devices. I even had a foot pedal, which died about a year ago. The practical use of the foot pedal was limited but worked perfect with some operations by which I had to keep the mouse button pressed for some time. An example of it would be the selection of zoomed in items in Photoshop.

I never got rid of my RSI, but I have it under control for years. And if my problem gets worse, I know I just have to exercise harder. And maybe spend an evening or two less behind the computer.

Soon I’ll give an article about the special hardware I use now to keep mu RSI in check.