4 ms·

A year ago I went down the rabbit hole of looking into custom trackball-keyboard integrations. Ploopy, Charybdis, Dactyl, CCK-ball, etc. My final boring conclus

A year ago I went down the rabbit hole of looking into custom trackball-keyboard integrations. Ploopy, Charybdis, Dactyl, CCK-ball, etc. My final boring conclusion is that what I had already been doing for the past 20 years is much cheaper and gets me 99.99% of the way: All you need is a regular ~$50 trackball and a regular ~$100 keyboard without a numpad. (You can have an overlay for that, if you need it.) As someone else pointed out, this new trackball will make you move your fingers (and wrists) significantly off home row. If you do that in one direction or the other doesn't really matter. If this works better for you than a Logitech or Kensington trackball, sweet, use it. But so far all the reviews are like "I've never used a trackball, but this looks cool". We've had this technology since the literal 1990s guys.

adolph 9mo ago
Yes, seeing this product's very angular non-3d-printed yet-prototype design brought back memories of the days when the default portable hardware interface didn't always include a pointing device and thus there were these clip-on trackballs, like below. Maybe some of the weirdest were things that looked like small mice that were linked and position-sensed by a bar linkage to the laptop. I can't find a reference to one tho, so maybe I'm mis-remembering? http://xahlee.info/kbd/logitech_trackman_portable_trackball.html http://xahlee.info/kbd/logitech_trackman_portable_trackball....
- nosrepa 9mo ago
  You are thinking of the HP Omnibook. https://youtu.be/xlXr37mggUE?t=4m50s https://youtu.be/xlXr37mggUE?t=4m50s
  - adolph 9mo ago
    Many thanks! Seeing that mouse-like thing pop out with the "mouse eject button" was very satisfactory. Having not seen that hardware interface today while reviewing Wikipedia entries for pointer devices left me questioning my memory like the Fruit of the Loom cornucopia or "Berenstein Bears".
locknitpicker 9mo ago
> If this works better for you than a Logitech or Kensington trackball, sweet, use it. But so far all the reviews are like "I've never used a trackball, but this looks cool". Most people never saw a trackball, let alone used it. Mainly because either your PC comes with a mouse, or you use a laptop which comes with a touchpad. Your regular ~$50 sucks because it follows the form factor of a mouse even though you don't have to move it around. If you grew used to one then you don't notice the poor form factor, but it's awkward and still forces to move your hand away of a keyboard. The Charybdis, Dactyl, and CCK-ball kind of address the problem by making it reachable by a thumb, but they don't eliminate it completely because it still forces you to follow an awkward user flow. This product feels like a trackball that lets you place it where it makes sense. I think it's an improvement. I have faith that keyboards with embedded touchpad such as the Kinesis Form fix this issue, but I'm not willing to shelf ~$300 for an experiment. I'd rather try out a split keyboard and have a boring touchpad where it feels right. Multi-finger touch gestures kind of eliminate any other flow. Hopefully keychron will consider that too.
- skinner927 9mo ago
  The Form is $199, not $300. So, smaller gamble but it sure looks like a gamble.
  - i_am_jl 9mo ago
    Kinesis charges $100 to ship anywhere outside of North America. Also, it's not a split board, you can't actually separate the two halves. For a touch over $300 you could have almost any split board/track pad combo you'd want. Such a strange product from Kinesis.
- semi-extrinsic 9mo ago
  > Your regular ~$50 sucks because it follows the form factor of a mouse even though you don't have to move it around. I don't understand - between the Kensington Orbit, Kensington TB550, Elecom HUGE, Nulea M505, M511 & M514 and the Micropack V05M - what ergonomic form factors are we missing?
Topgamer7 9mo ago
I did build a charybdis, and I daily it. Its been great typing wise. I don't have any wrist issues anymore. The trackball I don't use for any precision actions. Its useful if I want to hit a tab, or move to the other monitor. But trying to hit small links for example is painful. (That being said I am using the stock bearings, which don't seem to work well) It was a significant expense for a keyboard, especially being a kit. Albeit my wrists are worth it.
- tortilla 9mo ago
  I'm enjoying my ZSA Voyager and Navigator (trackball) combo. Out of picture, I also have a Magic Trackpad (right) and Logitech MX Anywhere 3 (left). I like to switch up my hand movements. https://i.postimg.cc/TYMSMCT1/IMG-1528.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/TYMSMCT1/IMG-1528.jpg
  - Topgamer7 9mo ago
    Do you find you use the trackball for precise movements? I wonder if a more polished product is any different than the Charybdis.
    - tortilla 9mo ago
      I used the trackball for about 2 weeks straight when I got it. I felt I could do about 95% of movements I wanted pretty easily. Became like second nature. But I prefer the Magic Trackpad for its gestures. So basically I have 3 pointing devices on my desk now (LOL).
  - darkteflon 9mo ago
    Hello, fellow ZSA Voyager plus dual-weild aficionado! It’s great, isn’t it? I saw [this](https://evantravers.com/articles/2023/04/06/magsafe-tenting-and-wearable-keyboards/ https://evantravers.com/articles/2023/04/06/magsafe-tenting-...) here recently and promptly bought some mini-tripods and MagSafe adapters. Access to arbitrary tenting angles has been a big plus. I also have a 3D printed deck for it that sits over my MacBook keyboard and is quite nice. Don’t want to lose access to my Miryoku layout when on the move! Especially home row chording. I also went down the switches rabbit hole and ended up with lighter weight switches under my pinkies, which I find quite pleasant. I also dual-wield a Magic Trackpad (outside left) and Logitech Lift (which I have found to be vastly better for my wrist than a normal mouse, since it requires much less unnatural rotation). I’m also looking forward to the ZSA trackpad attachment for the Voyager. Interested to see whether it’s an improvement on the excellent Magic Trackpad. As an avid Magic Trackpad user, what do you think of the trackball? All in all, though, this kind of setup feels like something of final destination, don’t you think? No more desire to tinker and can see myself using it this way for decades - just replacing switches if / when they fail. I even have some spare keycaps which I bought from Tai-Hao (who manufacture the original keycaps, I believe). I bought the blanks from ZSA then sort of regretted it. They look so darn cool but made the transition to Miryoku harder than it needed to be. Goodness gracious look how much I’ve written about my keyboard. My wife would find this very amusing.
stronglikedan 9mo ago
> this new trackball will make you move your fingers (and wrists) significantly off home row. Only if you use it off to one side or the other. Seems like it was built to live below the KB and be operated with thumbs. If that's the case, your fingers should never have to leave the home row. Now it may interfere with KB wrist rests, but learning proper typing form (raised wrists) would solve for that.
mrandish 9mo ago
> If this works better for you than a Logitech or Kensington trackball A few years back, I bought and tried various Logitech/Kensington-type trackballs between two halves of my split keyboard and none of them worked well enough due to being too large for comfortable reach (and also the casing being large enough to force the halves farther apart than I prefer). I even bought a smaller uncased trackball component to try to make something but never got around to it. I saw a photo of this product a few days ago in some CES round-up and immediately thought "oh, someone finally made the thing I wanted" (narrow, small). Of course, because the exact height, position and angle of these kinds of things tend to matter ergonomically, it may not work for me but it's a lot closer than anything I've yet seen. If it's reasonably priced, I'll probably pick one up to try.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
Finnucane 9mo ago
I've been using trackballs since the early 1980s (that was a custome-built thing attached to a DG Nova, but still). Can't go back to a regular mouse. But yeah, I don't see what this does that my current trackballs don't do, or at least that I would ever use. And it looks really awkward to use. I also don't really care that much about the half-second it takes to move my hand. I don't touch-type or type nonstop. So practically that means nothing to me.
semi-extrinsic 9mo ago
Too late to add this as an edit to my post, but: I should have specified I do a fair bit of CAD and image editing work in addition to coding, so I need a high quality pointing device. If you just use the pointing device for switching windows and clicking links/icons, maybe it's a different story.

adolph 9mo ago

Yes, seeing this product's very angular non-3d-printed yet-prototype design brought back memories of the days when the default portable hardware interface didn't always include a pointing device and thus there were these clip-on trackballs, like below. Maybe some of the weirdest were things that looked like small mice that were linked and position-sensed by a bar linkage to the laptop. I can't find a reference to one tho, so maybe I'm mis-remembering? http://xahlee.info/kbd/logitech_trackman_portable_trackball.html http://xahlee.info/kbd/logitech_trackman_portable_trackball....

nosrepa 9mo ago
You are thinking of the HP Omnibook. https://youtu.be/xlXr37mggUE?t=4m50s https://youtu.be/xlXr37mggUE?t=4m50s
- adolph 9mo ago
  Many thanks! Seeing that mouse-like thing pop out with the "mouse eject button" was very satisfactory. Having not seen that hardware interface today while reviewing Wikipedia entries for pointer devices left me questioning my memory like the Fruit of the Loom cornucopia or "Berenstein Bears".

locknitpicker 9mo ago

> If this works better for you than a Logitech or Kensington trackball, sweet, use it. But so far all the reviews are like "I've never used a trackball, but this looks cool". Most people never saw a trackball, let alone used it. Mainly because either your PC comes with a mouse, or you use a laptop which comes with a touchpad. Your regular ~$50 sucks because it follows the form factor of a mouse even though you don't have to move it around. If you grew used to one then you don't notice the poor form factor, but it's awkward and still forces to move your hand away of a keyboard. The Charybdis, Dactyl, and CCK-ball kind of address the problem by making it reachable by a thumb, but they don't eliminate it completely because it still forces you to follow an awkward user flow. This product feels like a trackball that lets you place it where it makes sense. I think it's an improvement. I have faith that keyboards with embedded touchpad such as the Kinesis Form fix this issue, but I'm not willing to shelf ~$300 for an experiment. I'd rather try out a split keyboard and have a boring touchpad where it feels right. Multi-finger touch gestures kind of eliminate any other flow. Hopefully keychron will consider that too.

skinner927 9mo ago
The Form is $199, not $300. So, smaller gamble but it sure looks like a gamble.
- i_am_jl 9mo ago
  Kinesis charges $100 to ship anywhere outside of North America. Also, it's not a split board, you can't actually separate the two halves. For a touch over $300 you could have almost any split board/track pad combo you'd want. Such a strange product from Kinesis.
semi-extrinsic 9mo ago
> Your regular ~$50 sucks because it follows the form factor of a mouse even though you don't have to move it around. I don't understand - between the Kensington Orbit, Kensington TB550, Elecom HUGE, Nulea M505, M511 & M514 and the Micropack V05M - what ergonomic form factors are we missing?

Topgamer7 9mo ago

I did build a charybdis, and I daily it. Its been great typing wise. I don't have any wrist issues anymore. The trackball I don't use for any precision actions. Its useful if I want to hit a tab, or move to the other monitor. But trying to hit small links for example is painful. (That being said I am using the stock bearings, which don't seem to work well) It was a significant expense for a keyboard, especially being a kit. Albeit my wrists are worth it.

tortilla 9mo ago
I'm enjoying my ZSA Voyager and Navigator (trackball) combo. Out of picture, I also have a Magic Trackpad (right) and Logitech MX Anywhere 3 (left). I like to switch up my hand movements. https://i.postimg.cc/TYMSMCT1/IMG-1528.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/TYMSMCT1/IMG-1528.jpg
- Topgamer7 9mo ago
  Do you find you use the trackball for precise movements? I wonder if a more polished product is any different than the Charybdis.
  - tortilla 9mo ago
    I used the trackball for about 2 weeks straight when I got it. I felt I could do about 95% of movements I wanted pretty easily. Became like second nature. But I prefer the Magic Trackpad for its gestures. So basically I have 3 pointing devices on my desk now (LOL).
- darkteflon 9mo ago
  Hello, fellow ZSA Voyager plus dual-weild aficionado! It’s great, isn’t it? I saw [this](https://evantravers.com/articles/2023/04/06/magsafe-tenting-and-wearable-keyboards/ https://evantravers.com/articles/2023/04/06/magsafe-tenting-...) here recently and promptly bought some mini-tripods and MagSafe adapters. Access to arbitrary tenting angles has been a big plus. I also have a 3D printed deck for it that sits over my MacBook keyboard and is quite nice. Don’t want to lose access to my Miryoku layout when on the move! Especially home row chording. I also went down the switches rabbit hole and ended up with lighter weight switches under my pinkies, which I find quite pleasant. I also dual-wield a Magic Trackpad (outside left) and Logitech Lift (which I have found to be vastly better for my wrist than a normal mouse, since it requires much less unnatural rotation). I’m also looking forward to the ZSA trackpad attachment for the Voyager. Interested to see whether it’s an improvement on the excellent Magic Trackpad. As an avid Magic Trackpad user, what do you think of the trackball? All in all, though, this kind of setup feels like something of final destination, don’t you think? No more desire to tinker and can see myself using it this way for decades - just replacing switches if / when they fail. I even have some spare keycaps which I bought from Tai-Hao (who manufacture the original keycaps, I believe). I bought the blanks from ZSA then sort of regretted it. They look so darn cool but made the transition to Miryoku harder than it needed to be. Goodness gracious look how much I’ve written about my keyboard. My wife would find this very amusing.

stronglikedan 9mo ago

> this new trackball will make you move your fingers (and wrists) significantly off home row. Only if you use it off to one side or the other. Seems like it was built to live below the KB and be operated with thumbs. If that's the case, your fingers should never have to leave the home row. Now it may interfere with KB wrist rests, but learning proper typing form (raised wrists) would solve for that.

mrandish 9mo ago

> If this works better for you than a Logitech or Kensington trackball A few years back, I bought and tried various Logitech/Kensington-type trackballs between two halves of my split keyboard and none of them worked well enough due to being too large for comfortable reach (and also the casing being large enough to force the halves farther apart than I prefer). I even bought a smaller uncased trackball component to try to make something but never got around to it. I saw a photo of this product a few days ago in some CES round-up and immediately thought "oh, someone finally made the thing I wanted" (narrow, small). Of course, because the exact height, position and angle of these kinds of things tend to matter ergonomically, it may not work for me but it's a lot closer than anything I've yet seen. If it's reasonably priced, I'll probably pick one up to try.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

Finnucane 9mo ago

I've been using trackballs since the early 1980s (that was a custome-built thing attached to a DG Nova, but still). Can't go back to a regular mouse. But yeah, I don't see what this does that my current trackballs don't do, or at least that I would ever use. And it looks really awkward to use. I also don't really care that much about the half-second it takes to move my hand. I don't touch-type or type nonstop. So practically that means nothing to me.

semi-extrinsic 9mo ago

Too late to add this as an edit to my post, but: I should have specified I do a fair bit of CAD and image editing work in addition to coding, so I need a high quality pointing device. If you just use the pointing device for switching windows and clicking links/icons, maybe it's a different story.