DIY Trackball | Why? Parts so far.


diy trackball

Why?

Why not? Years back I was beginning to have some hand issues from working and moved to a Logitech M575 in an attempt to have a more ergonomic workstation. Years ago this worked nicely and was a perfectly fine work device. Eventually I started to have some discomfort in my thumb. Since my original complaints resolved I moved to a nice mouse. Alternating back and forth until I was looking around for different format trackballs and decided to look for a premium finger trackball. Trackball without the repetitive thumb movements. Turns out there really aren’t many with even modest hardware compared to contemporary mice. Looking into it I had come across someone that made their own…and decided I could do that. Especially after I had seen Ploopy.co had some rather polished open source models to print your own shell.

Current Market

Trackballs are not a particularly large market at the moment for input devices. Many of the available devices have seen little change in a decade or more at this point. The sensors on the devices show it. On a standard screen just doing normal navigation and productivity you likely won’t really see the shortcomings of the rather archaic hardware. Now, use a computer with 4k and high DPI screens while playing an RTS flipping the ball around you start to notice the limits. With few exceptions (see below) the trackballs on the market can’t meet the performance required. The handful that do cost quite a bit and all leave the user making a sacrifice in my opinion.

The goal is something with around a 1000 Hz polling rate and 10,000+ dpi. This would put it in the realm of a budget performance mouse like the Logitech G203 or Razer Viper. A pretty tall order when you consider the rather stagnant options in the trackball market. Where the Kensington Slim Blade is considered one of the best. It is in a lot of ways but in power it is not with a fixed 1600 DPI and 125 Hz polling rate.

The Options

GameBall

It appears there are at least a few trying to fill this niche. Like the GameBall I purchased to try out a new formfactor in the meantime. A rather nice device. Though, I feel like in making an ambidextrous design makes sacrifices in ergonomics. Enough so that I can never quite find myself being comfortable while using it. There is no apparent way to lock the LED color change button either and it’s constantly touched accidentally. Performance wise it works pretty flawlessly as it’s specs would indicate. Handles flicking from one end of the screen no problem.

Ploopy Classic

There is also the open source Ploopy family of devices. Which were the inspriration for me to undertake this endeavor. Selecting the right device you hit the performance numbers I was aspiring to hit. However, assembled these are quite steep at $155 assembled plus shipping. You can save money buying it as a kit if you are comfortable enough to do the work. As a base I would have loved to buy the electronics kit for the Classic Trackball internals and play with the shell a bit. Such as using a slightly modified case to use ball bearings instead of roller bearings. As these are all open source you can modify them and use them to your own ends.

L-Trac

Lastly, we have the CST L-Trac which is a rather archaic looking option. I’ve never personally used one however I hear they are built like tanks and their hardware would indicate that they also hit the polling rate and dpi requirements I set. The reason I didn’t select this device as a hold over while working on this project was the lack of buttons. While I hear good things about the scrolling having just 2 buttons was a bit of a dealbreaker.

Tools

Parts List So Far

As you can see this isn’t exactly going to be saving money. There are things to be gained to make it worth the trouble. First, I get to have a trackball with the specs I want and whatever ergonomics that work for me. Then there are the skills to be gained from working with a programming a microcontroller in Rust to read from a sensor and act as an HID mouse while learning 3d printing.