[dgrabla]

I have one of the original right hand Ploopy trackballs.

- It comes in a kit and as you need to assemble it, you feel emotionally attached to it

- The designer (Colin) probably has big hands. I have a small hand and it doesn't fit right.

- The 3d printed texture is great.

- The ball doesn't 'flow'. It doesn't keep momentum. You apply a strong movement and it spins dead within the second.

- I absolutely love it is open source, but there is not much of a community around it, probably because the barriers of entry are quite high. I never found the time to hack it myself.

- It tracks the movement extremely well. Accuracy, precision are awesome. Better than any other trackball I have (and I have MANY). On par with the logitech mx master.

- The position of the thumb wheel is not good for my hand. After months of use it started giving me RSI. And now everytime I use it, I notice within the hour that something is not right.

My perfect trackball would be the ploopy:

- With a smaller body for small hands

- With momentum in the scroll wheel ALA logitech mice

- With a different position for the scroll wheel

[1MachineElf]

>The ball doesn't 'flow'. It doesn't keep momentum. You apply a strong movement and it spins dead within the second.

For this issue, some people have modified their Ploopy trackballs with great success using Ball Transfer Units. Here's a long blog post about it: https://www.gbryant.co.uk/posts/2021-02-15_ploopy-trackball/...

An example video of BTUs functioning in a Kingston trackball: https://www.reddit.com/r/Trackballs/comments/ddlovq/ladies_a...

[geniium]

> - With a smaller body for small hands

That's actually a nice idea. It would be great to have three sizes, like S, M and L.

[thefunnyman]

Even better, some kind of configuration that accepts a range of values and then generates a model. Dactyl keyboards work this way

https://github.com/adereth/dactyl-keyboard

[geniium]

Interesting! Personally I like the ZSA Moonlander. You can adjust it pretty well.

[Abishek_Muthian]

Thanks for the summary.

May I ask why do you prefer trackballs over say a trackpad? I too like trackballs due to tangible feeling of it but I use a wacom tablet as trackpad for accessibility reasons.

The open nature of Ploopy might be well suited for those with accessibility needs like me but as you say the barrier for entry is high(but so are any other accessibility hardware; unfortunately).

[xkcd-sucks]

Personally, I prefer trackballs (specifically the "thumb" type) because they minimize wrist movement and finger contortions. Using a trackpad or mouse for an extended period of time, my wrist gets quite painful, and clicking on a trackpad likewise makes my finger joints painful. This is probably not fundamental, but trackballs just seem to make ergonomics easier.

Secondarily, with a trackball it's easier to cover a large area "ballistically" i.e. with a mouse or trackpad you might have to do multiple side-to-side traversals in order to go across your screens (or set a very high DPI which also gets tiring after a while)

[Abishek_Muthian]

Interestingly the reasons you mention for using trackball over trackpad is the same reason I use trackpad over a mouse. I guess a thumb based trackball does better in those regards,

Do you have suggestions for a decent thumb based trackball?

[benhurmarcel]

I’m not the person you responded to, but I’ve owned several thumb trackballs and my favorite is the Logitech MX Ergo Plus.

The “Plus” version is the same as the normal “MX Ergo” but with an optional angled support provided (and only available in the US, I imported mines from Ebay).

[Abishek_Muthian]

Thank you, I saw the pictures that the trackball mouse and I wonder whether they are quite large in order to accommodate the trackball as I have a small palm(dwarfism).

The dimensions[1][2] when compared to standard mouse(e.g. M275)[3] seems to be about an inch higher(height, width), Also the GP comment says Ploopy was a bit large to use; Are the thumb trackball mouse inherently larger?

[1] https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/mx-ergo-wireles...

[2] https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/m575-ergo-wirel...

[3] https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360023307234-Logi...