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on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Ploopy Classic 2 open source trackball
vlowther wrote 1 hour 52 min ago:
I still miss my Trackman Marble FX. Never found a trackball design as
elegant and useable as it was.
URI [1]: https://www.lenzg.net/uploads/images/Trackman_Marble_FX.jpg
mfro wrote 7 hours 50 min ago:
This mouse is very similar to the Protoarc EM03, which is the best
trackball I have ever used. Unfortunately it seems it was discontinued
recently. Still waiting on a reply from Protoarc as to why the shop
page is down.
dwighttk wrote 9 hours 33 min ago:
Is this just going to be a fortnightly article now?
jaffa2 wrote 10 hours 33 min ago:
Dumb question but is this the type where you use your thumb or your
fingerd to control? I see conflicting comments below. I have a few
trackballs but prefer by far the centralised kind rather than the thumb
kind.
mkozlows wrote 6 hours 45 min ago:
The Ploopy Adept is their central ball model. This is a top ball.
caboteria wrote 8 hours 52 min ago:
You control the trackball with the fingers of your right hand, and
there's a scroll wheel and right and left buttons under your right
thumb.
idahoduncan wrote 12 hours 45 min ago:
I like that Ploopy are designing and building open-source hardware. I
have their Classic (1) trackball, which has been great. I recently got
their new trackpad, which is better for me. Having multi-finger
gestures (pinch to zoom, swipe back) is nice.
donatj wrote 16 hours 7 min ago:
I personally like trackballs with a large central ball where I can use
all my fingers. I am aware Ploopy offers one. This style however has
fallen out of popularity, but I've been using them since the mid-90s.
Just using your thumb for all navigation seems like an RSI waiting to
happen.
Also I don't know who in the last couple years decided it's a
"Trackball Mouse" it's just a Trackball in the same way it's just a
"Trackpad" and not a "Trackpad Mouse"
RajT88 wrote 6 hours 7 min ago:
I have purchased a bunch of trackballs, trying to find the best one
for me. The Kensington Expert is as you describe, but maybe not
quite to my liking. If I did graphic design work, it'd be the one I
want for sure - the level of granularity is great.
For my money (clicking with thumb/pinky, using ball and scroll wheel
with index and middle fingers) the Kensington Orbit is my daily
driver. I even use it for shooter games, since I'm much more
accustomed to trackballs these days than mice. As an added bonus, it
seems a lot easier on my tendons than a mouse.
dgrabla wrote 6 hours 27 min ago:
Indeed I have a ploopy 1 on the drawer because it gives me strong RSI
on the thumb.
kps wrote 7 hours 4 min ago:
This is the only âTrackball Mouseâ I know of: [1] It's a pretty
small trackball.
URI [1]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Mighty_Mouse_W...
eddie_catflap wrote 8 hours 36 min ago:
I bought a Logitech MX Ergo a couple of years back and genuinely love
it for many of the reasons other trackballs users cite in this thread
- but I have noticed in the last few months that my thumb joint will
get 'stuck' and makes a click when I unstick it. Definitely related
to the MX Ergo and the thumb navigation like you say. I'm an older
gentleman which likely contributes.
So might be tempted by an all finger alternative - at the moment I'm
attempting to up my use of a terminal window manager to minimise
pointer use
boothby wrote 9 hours 21 min ago:
I'm prone to RSI, and I started using a logitech trackman in '99 or
'00. I've occasionally had periods of using mice or trackpads, and
extended use of either causes flareups. I've never had flareups with
a thumb ball, even with pointer-intensive use like CAD, FPS and
graphics. So I keep returning to them -- I've been using them more
or less continually for around 25 years. So for my body, it's a
clear win on ergonomics; ymmv.
boomskats wrote 6 hours 18 min ago:
I can second this. Same story, been thumbing it for 25 years or so.
I've also used it through some fairly painful ligament injury
('gamekeeper's thumb'), and if anything I think it helped with the
recovery.
I remember someone telling me 20ish years ago that, as opposable
thumbers, we have more nerves/muscles dedicated to each thumb than
we do for the other 4 fingers combined. Not sure how true that is,
but it stuck with me.
i_am_proteus wrote 10 hours 47 min ago:
L-Trac is still in production, made by P.I. Engineering, "The No
Slogan Company"
RajT88 wrote 6 hours 2 min ago:
I wanted to try one of those, but I was put off by the scroll bar
being above the ball. It seems unnatural to have to reach over to
scroll. What as your experience been, if you (or anyone else) has
one?
DecentShoes wrote 11 hours 27 min ago:
I agree. I actually almost bought a trackball, thinking it was a
mouse that also had a trackball in it, because of this misleading
naming.
ginko wrote 11 hours 43 min ago:
I'm working on an open source one for myself: [1] Next step is adding
QMK support.
URI [1]: https://github.com/ginkgo/trackball
donatj wrote 6 hours 43 min ago:
Oh super cool! Pico powered and everything
cassianoleal wrote 12 hours 28 min ago:
> Just using your thumb for all navigation seems like an RSI waiting
to happen.
I have a thumb trackball. It's been a blessing to my RSI. I can fully
rest my hand and fingers on it. With a central ball, I need to keep
tension on my fingers otherwise they roll on the ball and move the
cursor. That seems like an RSI waiting to happen.
Abishek_Muthian wrote 17 hours 3 min ago:
I have deformities in my wrist and I have small palms (dwarfism) Iâve
tried various kinds of mice; none of them were comfortable and settled
on using a Wacom tablet as a trackpad.
Recently I started using Logitech Ergo M575 trackball mice and it has
been total game changer, I can even play FPS games quite well with it.
I highly recommend trackball for those with accessibility issues like
me and certainly welcome more open hardware competitors in the space
like Ploopy as customisation is crucial for accessibility.
tombert wrote 18 hours 37 min ago:
Potentially dumb question; how well do these kinds of trackball mice
work with games like Arkanoid of Breakout?
I've never been able to get used to those games with a mouse or
trackpad, and there aren't a ton of rotary controllers being produced
now as far as I know.
ofalkaed wrote 16 hours 36 min ago:
I play a fair amount of breakout with a Kensington Expert trackball,
works fairly well and a considerable improvement over a mouse or
trackpad. I do not see the ergonomic track balls working well here
but never tried, the small trackball means control drops quickly as
speed goes up.
lotharcable wrote 16 hours 40 min ago:
Kinda works ok for these types of games.
A lot of modern trackballs are fairly small and lightweight. They
don't have the sort of mass and quality of bearings, most of the
time, that will make them move around properly and roll like classic
arcade balls.
Arcade trackballs are kinda designed to hammered sideways and pushed
by the bottom of your palm. Can't really do that with a computer
trackball.
The Kensington Slime Blade pro is the closest in terms of physical
size. The ball will go flying if you try to get too energetic with
it, though. It is just sitting in a depression.
The Ploopy Adept is another possible option with similar issues. It
uses a smaller billiard (1.75 inches) ball as its central ball. It
does have high quality sensors, which makes a big difference. Since
it is open source I thought about buying one and modding it for a
full sized USA-style pool ball (2.25 inch). Which would be awesome.
Of course you can actually just go and buy a genuine arcade cabinet
quality ball that will support USB. You'll need to make a custom
gaming panel for it, though.
ofalkaed wrote 16 hours 32 min ago:
>Kensington Slime Blade pro
The Kensington Expert holds its ball much better and uses the same
size ball. I found the Slim Blade Pro to be awkward in general, the
ball sticks up too high above the buttons/body.
lotharcable wrote 16 hours 28 min ago:
I have both, kinda tend to forget about the Expert one. I like
the slim Blade for normal stuff.
ranger_danger wrote 18 hours 3 min ago:
There are tons of rotary options these days, what is your criteria?
tombert wrote 17 hours 57 min ago:
Just something that would be good to emulate a paddle controller
from the arcade and Atari era, with a relatively fast polling rate,
that can plug into USB.
benji-york wrote 11 hours 23 min ago:
One option:
URI [1]: https://www.ultimarc.com/trackballs-and-spinners/spinner...
_fat_santa wrote 19 hours 15 min ago:
These types of mice are just not for me but I looked at some of their
other products and honestly the thing I like most about them is how
everything is open source.
Ironically I think the fact that they open source their designs
probably helps sales. My first reaction is to scoff at the $144 price
tag but I know that if I go look at what it will take to build one
myself Iâm sure the $144 price tag will become much more reasonable.
lotharcable wrote 17 hours 3 min ago:
High quality human interface devices are expensive. There are
multiple reasons for this, but the biggest one is that very few
people are interested in buying high quality devices so they are very
nich product.
In terms of capabilities there isn't much out there that rivals
Ploopy. So 144 is pretty reasonable.
To put it into perspective this particular trackball is effectively a
clone of "Microsoft Trackball Explorer", which is no longer made
despite being well regarded by many. Used ones are usually going to
be over $100 with people selling refurbished or NOS or something like
that on Amazon for $250.
Budget clones are from SANWA and Nulea and they go for about $40-50
Ploopy Classic will get a much higher optical sensor, fully
programmable, and better bearings. Budget trackballs usually are
going to use budget sensors and tiny little ruby static bearings and
have limited programming options.
This is a problem because one of the weaknesses with track balls is
trying to balance out very fine movement with being able to move the
pointer quickly across the screen without wearing your thumb/fingers
out or being annoying.
This isn't a problem with the mouse. Big movements are accelerated by
the OS and you have a large object that is easily moved very finely.
This is why mice dominate competitive first person shooters and other
games that require both very high speed with pinpoint accuracy.
To compensate if you have a nice trackball you can crank the DPI
settings up and turn the mouse sensitivity and acceleration settings
down low and gain a lot of control. If your bearing suck then you
can't really fling the ball and have to do a lot of repetitive motion
to move quickly across the screen.
And if your sensor is low quality then when you fling the ball it
won't be able to track the movement accurately. Like the effect of
helicopter blades being recorded on a video camera.. The pointer
will stay still for a bit, and even go backwards until the ball slows
down enough to be tracked and the point shoots forward.
I have a Kensington Slim Blade pro, which is a popular trackball of a
different style and it suffers from this. And that costs over $100
retail.
On top of all of this cheaper balls will tend to rattle around a bit.
Which makes it miserable when you just _can't quite_ move the pointer
over just one more character or hit that tiny corner of a window
correctly.
So this is the sort of thing you do get what you pay for and Ploopy
is pretty darn nice. It isn't perfect, but you can do a lot worse
for the money.
woleium wrote 18 hours 44 min ago:
remember how much the ibm model m keyboard cost back in the 80s?
($200 or about $550 in todayâs money)
ejj28 wrote 18 hours 52 min ago:
Considering how much higher-end gaming mice can cost these days, $144
CAD for a niche mouse really isn't that bad in comparison.
OuterVale wrote 19 hours 44 min ago:
Given the site has been hugged to death, here is the most recent
Wayback Machine archive:
URI [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20250330150603/https://blog.ploopy...
onemoresoop wrote 19 hours 47 min ago:
Error establishing a database connection. The hug of death it seems
reassess_blind wrote 20 hours 41 min ago:
Anyone use a trackball mouse on their laptop for use while sitting on
the couch? How do you like it compared to the trackpad? How is it for
light gaming?
zigzag312 wrote 6 hours 18 min ago:
Elcom Wireless Trackball (M-RT1DRBK) works great while sitting on a
couch. I haven't tried gaming with it unfortunately.
toast0 wrote 16 hours 27 min ago:
I no longer compute on a couch, but if you like trackballs, I don't
see why you wouldn't like trackballs while sitting on a couch. I used
to be able to find somewhere to set it, and it was better than using
the trackpad.
But if you like trackpads, you might like them more than trackballs.
And if you dislike trackballs, you might dislike them more than
trackpads.
Trackballs never disappeared, although they're not mainstream
anymore; you used to be able to get a trackball to clip to the side
of your laptop, or get a laptop with a built in trackball... But
times have changed.
lotharcable wrote 16 hours 52 min ago:
I use a trackball almost exclusively. I will go back to mice for
first person shooters. Mice can move faster and have easier time
with pointer accuracy. This is where the sensor on a trackball is
very important as it helps a lot with tracking, but mice will always
have a edge if you are competitive. For stuff like Cyberpunk that
isn't so hard core I have a fine time with my trackball.
Trackballs come in all sorts of different sizes, shapes, and layouts.
Which works best is kinda up to your own physiology. That being said
i find the thumb-style tend to work out a bit better for sitting on a
sofa and plopping it down in random locations. It doesn't need a
hard surface, being sideways or odd angles isn't going to bother it.
Another advantage for the trackball is you don't need much room for
it. Just need enough room for it to sit on something without falling
off.
If I have somewhere flat then I prefer to have the big center ball
trackballs. Having a bigger ball with more mass is nice as more
energetic movements doesn't cause it to rattle around and it is nice
to be able to use multiple fingers.
Laptop trackpads are probably the worst devices ergonomically. It
doesn't really matter how nice of quality they are as it is the size
and position of them that make them bad to use. It is the repetitive
twisting and bending of the wrists to reach them that make them bad.
If you have a very nice trackpad that is on the side of the keyboard
then they probably can be very nice, though. I haven't tried them so
I can't say anything from experience.
accrual wrote 17 hours 35 min ago:
Yes, I did for a while. Used an MX Ergo thumb trackball. Initial
learning curve for sure, but if one sticks with it it'll become more
natural. It was quite comfortable and I felt fast and accurate. FPS
games were possible by the time I stopped, as my thumb started to
hurt...
giancarlostoro wrote 19 hours 4 min ago:
I use a trackball, you can set it next to you on the couch and just
use it normal. As for gaming, I still freak out people when I tell
them I use a trackball for gaming.
The only issue is games like Skyrim when lock picking requires moving
the mouse around, doing it with a trackball is a painful experience.
ljm wrote 11 hours 20 min ago:
Similar with Kingdom Come: Deliverance, especially with the combat
that requires you to try and point at a certain limb.
Although I blame the lock picking mini games and the combat for
that, since using a controller doesn't make them any less of an
annoyance.
Heliodex wrote 19 hours 35 min ago:
Been using a thumb trackball for a few months, it's definitely better
than a trackpad for long periods of use. I've tried rebinding the
mouse buttons so I could play most light games without touching the
keyboard, fun but impractical as mine would need a few more buttons
for that.
Tracking quality doesn't depend on the desk surface, though is
noticeably smoother after occasional ball cleanings. Overall an
interesting experience, and at least better than gaming with
wrist/forearm pain.
AramV wrote 20 hours 8 min ago:
I use a trackball for my laptop and desktop PC for over 20 years now
and highly recommend it. I have one with the ball with the ball under
the thumb instead of the middle like this one has though.
It works not just for light gaming, but also "heavy" gaming, like
shooters. Just move your thumb instead of your whole arm. Works
perfectly well.
And that's not even mentioning how relaxing it is. You can put the
trackball anywhere. I like to stretch my arms sometimes and put the
trackball away from me or lean back and put it on my lap. It works
on any surface.
tonyarkles wrote 17 hours 43 min ago:
Back when I was a wee lad, around 1993 or so Iâd guess, my
uncleâs work laptop had a trackball that plugged into a special
port on the side of it. Even though laptops of the time werenât
particularly good for, well, using on your lap, it was an
exceptionally nice way to be able to use a mouse in a limited
amount of table space.
Edit: thank you Reddit!
URI [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Trackballs/s/Lw3QQG9IY8
reassess_blind wrote 18 hours 25 min ago:
Which model do you use? Looking at the MX Ergo.
asciimov wrote 17 hours 6 min ago:
Iâve had an MX Ergo for several years (and other thumb
trackballs for 28 years), while I like the shape and like the
ergonomics, some issues stand out
- Rechargeable battery lasts 4-6 weeks. The 1 AA in the M570
lasted 6-9 months.
- No on device indicator that battery is low or about to die, it
just dies mid use.
- Rubberized coating under palm gets guncky over time.
AramV wrote 17 hours 43 min ago:
MX Ergo is the one I have as well.
alostpuppy wrote 17 hours 47 min ago:
I just bought the only left handed trackball mouse out there and
the âhugeâ from these cats: [1] They were a lot cheaper last
week. Maybe they have sales a lot or I just got lucky. But Iâve
loved them.
URI [1]: https://elecomusa.com/
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