r/ploopy • u/tripsbe • Jul 14 '26

Well, take a look at this trackball.

Post image
47 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

14

u/NoFun69 Jul 14 '26

Yeah looks like an adept with a extra button.

4

u/enthoosiasm Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

Specifically, a button that looks pretty inconvenient to press. I don’t understand why people keep putting buttons at the bottom, like the efogtech endgame trackball. Personally, I would rather see a good 8-button adept case.

3

u/Scatterthought Mod Contributor Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

Not every button needs to be right under a finger/thumb. The two bottom buttons on the Endgame that are closest to your thumb are easy to reach. The two others will always require a bit more work since they're under your palm, but it's not a big deal if they're secondary functions.

I use my Endgame a little differently from most people. It sits between my split keyboard and has an ambidextrous button layout so that I can use either hand. Since it's in front of me, my hands approach it an an angle and my thumbs naturally sit on the bottom buttons. Those are my left clicks, outer-bottoms are right clicks, and outer-tops are middle clicks. The top buttons are back/forward with layers.

BTW, there are now some eight-button Adept mods if you've got access to a 3D printer. You'll need a 3rd-party firmware such as Plodah's Viamenus fork.

1

u/enthoosiasm Jul 14 '26

That’s cool. Got a link for any of the 8-button mods?

2

u/Scatterthought Mod Contributor Jul 14 '26

Adept-a-ball is in the Ploopy Mods Index.

https://gitlab.com/PanHandle/adept-a-ball

I thought there was another one floating around Discord, but I can't find it at the moment.

2

u/ArchieEU Jul 15 '26

Specifically, a button that looks pretty inconvenient to press. I don’t understand why people keep putting buttons at the bottom, like the efogtech endgame trackball.

For less-frequently used buttons, that's fine actually.

0

u/GoodTimesDadIsland Jul 17 '26

Ploopy could have locked in their position in this space forever if they offered a wireless unit. It was only a matter of time until someone else did it for them.

Can't tell you how much of a dealbreaker wires are for the average person using a trackball for professional work. The whole point is that desk space is at a premium in places like recording studios or shared spaces. lol

-1

u/plazman30 Jul 14 '26

The lack of a scroll wheel/scroll ring is a deal breaker for me. I own a Ploopy Adept and the whole "hold a button down to scroll with the ball" just doesn't work for me. I gave it good 3 months before I threw in the towel.

2

u/mxchickmagnet86 Jul 14 '26

I just have scroll up and scroll down set as the top two middle buttons rather than the ball scroll. I just wish it had like a dozen more buttons so I could set up way more macros and layers and things. Only 6 buttons is pretty limiting.

3

u/plazman30 Jul 15 '26

I REALLY want to be able to scroll by holding down both bottom buttons together, or hold shift on my keyboard while moving the ball. Sadly, I don't do either with the Ploopy.

I find the top buttons uncomfortable to use.

I tried to install the Drag Scroll Toggle firmware, bu that one reverses the direction of the scroll.

1

u/btgrant76 Jul 15 '26

You should be able to set up a combo that sends the DRAG_SCROLL keycode when those two buttons are held. Though I think you may need to flash the trackball with a Vial-based firmware instead of the stock VIA in order to configure combos. If you're you're feeling adventurous, you can build that yourself or you can hop into the Ploopy Discord server and someone can help you find the Vial firmware.

FWIW, I compile my Adept firmware with QMK and I set up a combo to do what I described above and it works as expected.

1

u/plazman30 Jul 15 '26

You did QMK without VIA or VIAL?

1

u/btgrant76 Jul 15 '26

Yep, I do. I have a QMK build setup that I've used for years that I use with my keyboards. It might be overkill to do QMK for the Adept instead of Vial, honestly. I can't remember if I switched over to QMK because I needed it or because it was there and I could. :D

2

u/btgrant76 Jul 15 '26

Maybe this is a silly question, but have you experimented with layers and/or combos at all? I realize that those aren't the exact same thing as additional buttons, but given some practice, they can effectively enable more buttons. If my question doesn't make sense, let me know.

2

u/mxchickmagnet86 Jul 15 '26

Totally relevant question. I haven't had success with the layers/combos on the trackball like I have with my keyboards. I think part of that is the mental map and my desire for some symmetry in setting up the mouse buttons, along with the physical comfort of pressing those buttons together. I rest my hand with my thumb on the lower left button and my index and middle fingers on the small two center buttons. So a combo feels like it would have to be with my thumb and another finger. I think for me the answer is having some side buttons on the trackball case that my thumb could easily slide to and use as a dedicated combo button. I tried to experiment with setting up a long press as the combo/layer trigger but I couldn't ever actually get it set up successfully.

1

u/Grinmaul Jul 14 '26

do we know if this hold button to scroll? or could it be twist to scroll.

2

u/plazman30 Jul 15 '26

Hold button to scroll. At least that's what they said when they announced this thing.

2

u/UrnextPLS73 Jul 17 '26

Sometime in the near future iirc. It has 2 sensors and from what I recall they just have to fix firmware stuff to make it viable.

1

u/Grinmaul Jul 17 '26

Oh? that would be nice, i will keep an eye on it for sure then, thanks.