Pointing device options
Pointing device options
Hiya all. I was wondering what pointing options there were out there for split ergo keyboards? Looking around, on the face of it there seems to be the Apple Magic Trackpad 2 and well that's about it. There seem to be plenty of trackballs at various prices but nothing that looks particularly small and nondescript.
I will give mouse keys a try but I am really not convinced. If I could get my little Chromebook to display RDP colours correctly it may be that having a touchscreen would do just fine as an alternative.
I'm a huge fan of the Kensington Trackball in the middle in between my halves. It's not especially subtle or cute but it's very comfy to use. I think the slimblade is smaller, not sure. Also, I love mouse keys. I use them for all small movements that I can, and the trackball for larger movements. I would love an app that like, subdivides my screen into a grid that I can use to just automatically jump to a place with just my keyboard, that would be perfect.
TBH though, especially if you're a frontend dev on Mac, you will still need the trackpad or Magic Mouse. Gestures are kinda not replaceable, as far as I can tell.
I would love an app that like, subdivides my screen into a grid that I can use to just automatically jump to a place with just my keyboard, that would be perfect.
oh my god
bless you
Steermouse has been a nice pairing with the Kensington Trackball on the Mac. https://plentycom.jp/en/steermouse/
Little pricey, but it has a nice amount of customization options and worked way better than Kensington’s own Mac utility. One of it’s stand out functions is “Cursor Snapping”. Any time a dialog box pops open on your Mac, it’ll automatically drag your cursor over to it. You can just reach down and click if you’d like to hit Apply to whatever task you’re doing, but you can also easily just nudge your trackball to override the snapping and keep your mouse put. It really helps with excessive scrolling on ultrawide monitors.
So you have the cirque glide point trackpads, pimoroni trackball, a nornal trackball and a thumbstick as pointes devices.
All work with qmk and I think there are branches on zmk with some of the above at different stages.
That is if you want to go ergo / custom. Look or ffkb, bastard keyboards and similar sellers for something less custom and pre built.
Depending on where you are, there is also the ploppy trackballs and mice which are open sourced... but thise are devices on their own.
There's a more active discussion in the ZMK discord on pointing devices: https://discord.com/channels/719497620560543766/845285481888743434 or click the discord link on https://zmk.dev/ See also the trackpoint_builders subreddit. All this said I'm still biased to just using a humble Magic Trackpad 2.
If there was an officially supported way of getting the Magic Trackpad working properly on Windows and ChromeOS I would probably just get one. It's weird that there aren't more options out there for trackpads.
trackpoint!
The IBM .. I'm going to say joystick .. is so underrated. If I do go down the path of designing my own board I will definitely be looking into getting one on there in place of a switch or nestled in somehow.
check out the santoku for a 40% split with trackpoint. otherwise there's lots of custom builds with trackpoints. recently there's an experimental zmk driver, etc.
Ok here is a slightly tangential answer to my own post.
Wacom Intuos Small
It's a bit on the large side at 20cm x 16cm but it has bluetooth and supports Windows, Mac and ChromeOS, and can be used as a pointing device with advanced gestures.
That's 4cm wider and deeper than the magic trackpad with probably the same active area (the outside edges of the Intuos aren't touch sensitive) but it is almost half the price of the magic trackpad and fully supported on other operating systems.
I'm kind of tempted but it is kind of huge.
Oh man, do not get a Wacom if your primary use case is treating it like a trackpad. Particularly on MacOS. Pen mousing is a novel experience, but the touch functionality on the Pro pads largely feels like an afterthought. The scrolling gestures all map to those clunky ratcheting line-based scrolling and generally feel awful. It’s fine for navigating dialog boxes in Photoshop, but not really how you’d want to primarily interact with your computer.
What about something like this?
It's about 8cm2, USB, and ~US$26.
This one is similar and supports multitouch:
This one is more expensive, but it's tiny (35x28mm) and even shown stuck in the middle of an ergonomic keyboard, but also it's PS/2:
Yeah, I have seen all of them. I'm not going to discount them completely because they are on the small side, but they do all seem to be from the land that time forgot and almost designed for kiosks or something like that? As you say one has a PS/2 connector. Mice have come on leaps and bounds with support for multiple bluetooth profiles, great tracking and so on. I guess there is very little demand for trackpads.
As separate devices from finished consumer electronics, yes not much demand. What does the solution you have in mind look like though, if not a trackpad and buttons mounted in its own housing?
If you're handy with electronics and microcontrollers, you might be able to build what you want using one of these sensors: https://bela.io/products/trill/
Btw for great justice I have ordered a small Wacom Intuos and a Logitech Ergo M575.