Unfortunately, the excitement over my newly constructed mouse-click foot pedal has quickly faded as I find it a little uncomfortable to use continuously. I find that over long periods, keeping my foot angled up (i.e., off the pedal) can cause its own type of pain.
I was thinking that there must be a utility that would mimick mouse clicks and there are, but you can’t hold a key down and have that be the same as holding a mouse button. I even thought about writing my own app, but it appears to be a Windows limitation. (Probably a way to do it programatically, but its probably not simple.)
So then I started thinking about a keyboard with a trackpad and buttons, or a standalone trackpad. Then it occured to me…why not just have a second mouse and put it upside-down just to the left of the keyboard? If I affixed it somehow to a flat surface to keep it from moving, I could use the mouse buttons with my left hand. Then I remembered that I had kept a broken mouse that wasn’t tracking right, but whose buttons still worked.
I covered the optical sensor with a Post It to keep it from thinking its moving–not sure if this is a long-term fix. So far so good with this set up. I’ll keep you posted.