Ploopy Bean: a trackpoint for every computer | Hacker News Reader

Ploopy Bean: a trackpoint for every computer

ploopy.co

177 pointsjibcage83 comments

1. Plea to anyone doing TrackPoint projects: consider using a 6mm TrackPoint assembly that can accommodate an off-the-shelf 6mm Soft Rim cap.

See this comparison of the shortening and changing of the TrackPoint cap over time, and you can imagine how the current 3mm caps end up requiring more finger pressure than the 6mm soft rim cap, to get pressure to register:

https://saoto28.wixsite.com/trackpoint4life/comparison

I own a very nice ThinkPad P1, but my daily driver is currently a ThinkPad W520 battleship from 2012, entirely because its TrackPoint is more comfortable to use. (I acclimated to the P1's chiclet keyboard easily, but the slippery TrackPoint cap was definitely harder on my finger and hand.)

On the W520, I can type prolifically, all day and evening, 7 days a week, without discomfort. I don't want to break the TrackPoint soft rim magic that helps make that possible.

2. If someone in the US wants to try to make good soft rim 3mm caps that will fit modern ThinkPads, and save Lenovo from losing TrackPoint adherents, here is a starting point that Saoto kindly shared:

https://grabcad.com/library/softrim-trackpoint-cap-for-3-mm-...

If you can do soft rim with high-quality molding (not 3D printing, and determine the right materials and processes, and red top), some people are so desperate that they're paying $50+ for a single tiny 3D-printed cap to be mailed from Japan. If I was confident that high-quality caps gave a W520-like experience, I'd gladly pay $100 for 10 of them, just to start with.

That ought to be a relatively straightforward mod here, as long as the stalk is compatible. It's just clearance on the casing, right?

For such a niche area, it's astonishing how many of these projects miss some or indeed all of relevant features of the TrackPoint. In this particular case, it has already been mentioned that this doesn't make any sense outside of the keyboard. Additionally, it looks really awkward to use for someone used to the classic and there seems to be no button suitable for scrolling. It really looks like a "we heard geeks like trackpoints, let's do one" kind of project.

Exactly. People love trackpoint because it's right there in the middle of the keyboard, and you don't have to move your hands.

Any variation of trackpoint where you have to move your hand away from the keyboard, is a failure IMHO

In X11 (and probably in Wayland, since this is a libinput thing) you can define a button as a scroll lock.

So, hold down the scroll lock button and the thumbstick becomes a scroller. That leaves three buttons for left, middle and right.

Sure, but which of those buttons would be suitable? Keep in mind, it will be your thumb that needs to land naturally on that button while your index finger rests on the trackpoint. And the scroll button is also usually the middle button even though there are cases where you need middle-mouse drag (looking at you, Blender) for which a fourth button might go quite nice.

I'm right handed, so I would pick the bottom left button as the scroll lock, with the top left button as 1, top right button as 2, and bottom right as 3.

"scroll button is also usually the middle button" -- these functions are completely separable in libinput.

Meaning you would be pressing LMB and RMB with your index finger, moving it from the trackpoint itself? I can imagine controlling the trackpoint with the middle finger and use the index and ring finger to press the buttons, but it's far away from the "original" way to do it.

it feels like someone promoted ai on what to build and kept going with that same process. the other products sre just as odd lol. fun site though!

I'm not sure they're odd? They're using a 3D printer. If the CAD design is open, you could even assemble your own repair parts.

I can highly recommend the Azeron Cyro [1] (cannot comment on their other products, but they look interesting). It is partly 3D printed, but also repairable and mod-able. It is the only vertical mouse I am aware of, with a modest amount of keys (15 + scroll wheel + analog thumbstick). I say keys since, well, in software they're recognized as such. You can also make it a Bluetooth mouse (I use USB2BT+), though obviously you suffer a bit from latency.

[1] https://azeron.com/collections/cyro

I can promise you it isn’t. This totally predates llms. Been using them for a long time

I’ll give you a use case. People with disabilities who can’t use the keyboard. Ploopy stuff has been absolutely amazing.

Does it work better than a trackball (thinking of the Kensington ones) in that respect ?

Depends on the disability. Not a homogenous group. "Work better" for whom?

I’ve provided a lot of different of the balls. Last one was for someone in bed and needed to control the whole pc with his chin. We adapted the base to fit on a mount. Other uses for people with ALS with reduced hand function - altered the ball shape to hold the hand.

Yes. Then I couldn't come up with a case where the trackpoint would work great but not a trackball.

Probably my lack of imagination, the article is about desk setup, and while you can move a trackball with basically anything that has friction, a trackpoint is a lot smaller and finicky. A joystick could be a better version if we're thinking adaptive input.

Use those a lot to (always try and focus off the shelf first). But for cases where we need to position differently we often need something custom

Thanks! About off the shelf but customizable, slightly off topic, but Keychron is producing one of the smaller trackballs with full button mapping management:

https://keychron.co.jp/pages/nape-pro

Anyone wanting one that could fit anywhere on any side of a keyboard could be interested.

I have a tendency to tote around a trackball since I cannot stand using a trackpad for extended periods. I would imagine there are people who think similarly, but would want to use something more compact.

Ultimate hacking keyboard has modules that include a track point, touchpad or a trackball. I’ve been eyeing it for a while: https://uhk.io/

Kanata has mouse emulation so you can drive a mouse using arrow keys: https://github.com/jtroo/kanata/blob/main/docs/config.adoc#m...

Any keyboard can drive the mouse pointer. But trackpoint is an acceptable drawing device, while a keyboard is sadly not.

The UHK also supports mouse keys. I own both the 60v2 and the newer UHK 80 (I was a beta tester), these keyboards are my final destination. The only reason I would consider a change is if they released an ortholinear layout.

Yes, of course. I’ve accidentally fallen down the split keyboard rabbit hole and now I can’t get out. UHK seems like it’s got everything that I might ever need but I’m going to stick with my Aliexpress Corne for a bit longer before I take the plunge.

I have a tented split scissor switch that is quite wide, and it still annoys my shoulder with the inward pivot. Plus I seem to do reasonably well two fingering a smart phone so, well, what is the point? We can put a SOC in an interface with reasonable speed these days. I would love to see a radical departure. A glove interface surely could be better?

I went the opposite way: I started with UHK, then went for a ZSA moonlander, but settled on a kbdcraft Israfel, which is a relatively cheap, split ortholinear.

I felt most of the extra functionality and polish that I guess makes up the massive costs of UHK and ZSA wasn't actually necessary. It was cool and fun and useful to try a bunch of different stuff, but then over time, I wanted things to be simple and small which UHK and ZSA Moonlander aren't (ZSA voyager wasn't at the time).

All I'm saying is if you've got comfortable with a cheap Corne, I think you might feel underwhelmed if you spend a lot on something a lot fancier.

There's an Israeli guy selling some sick mouse enabled splits too https://holykeebs.com/collections/keyboards. I have a crkbd with a trackpoint from him and love it. Beekeep has a version too that I'm waiting to take delivery of https://shop.beekeeb.com/products/toucan-wireless-piantor-wi...

It was however stuck in customs for quite a while, but I guess that's what I get for ordering custom electronics from Israel right after those pagers blew up.

I originally bought the touchpad for my UHK. But, much to my surprise, I have gravitated towards the keyboard's built-in mouse layer over time! Now I scarcely plug in the touchpad (or even key cluster) modules at all.

As a sidenote, I love my UHK. Just a joy to use, and it's so easy to customize. I don't have any experience with competitors like the ZSA Voyager, but the UHK's configuration software and macro language do make it quite pleasant to bend to your will. For instance, I do some funky stuff with macros and lighting here: https://www.cgl.sh/blog/posts/wnl.html

I had a UHK for a few months before refunding it because the shielding wasn't good enough to stop it becoming unreliable when my mobile phone was within about 30cm of my keyboard. I contacted support and the solution was to move the phone away from the keyboard, which is kind of irritating for such an expensive piece of kit.

But, just wanted to share that I was similarly surprised to land on mouse keys as a preference. I tried most of the UHK modules which were also pretty good and have since tried various other trackballs and pads, but since trying UHK mouse keys, they're what I keep coming back to most, even since switching to new keyboards.

One issue I have with mouse keys is fear of using them in front of others though: every so often, if I need to click something particularly small and don't have a keyboard shortcut memorised (vscode panel resizing is one) it can sometimes take me a fair few embarrassing seconds drawing small squares around my target before I resort to actual mouse hardware.

For the amount of time and thought and effort people have put into alternative mice, I feel mouse keys are massively overlooked and probably have a lot of room for software/firmware innovation without hardware costs.

You bring up a good point -- I have the same issue with mouse keys. I wonder how the track point gets around this. Is the tracepoint "progressive" in that it allows various speeds depends on deflection from center?

That's a good question and make me think. I always thought the trackpoint nubs were binary too, basically just a stick in the middle of up/down/left/right mousekey buttons, bit it turns out they're not!

For original trackpoints, it's basically a stick in the middle of an up/down/left/right resistive strain gauge.

For the ploopy beans here, they use hall effect sensors instead of resistive strain to get a bit more movement.

As soon as you have non-binary up/down/left/right values, the mouse direction and speed can be interpolated to so many values that mousekey accidental squares become impossible.

Isn't the point that it's integrated in the keyboard, so that you don't have to move your hands away to use it?

I'm typing this on a Thinkpad Trackpoint II keyboard and have no idea why I'd want an off keyboard pointing stick. If you want to use a pointing stick why not have it right next to your index finger while you're on the home row? If you want your mouse cursor control to be off of the keyboard, why not use a regular mouse?

In theory you could use it with your foot...

It fills the niche of "pointing device that uses a constant amount of deskspace" in the same way that a trackball does, but differently. Different strokes, different folks.

NGL I was always a fan of TrackPoints for how compact the pointing device was. Also liked the Logitech Trackman Marble for similar reasons. It's kind of cool, though unnecessary, to have a way to get a TrackPoint on a desktop now without being locked to one discontinued Lenovo keyboard.

Interestingly, this device uses a totally different mechanism than classic trackpoints. Where true trackpoints use a network of strain gauges on the PCB, this is a 3D hall effect sensor and a spring. A trackpoint has only an imperceptible amount of travel, and this is designed to physically move. I really wonder how it feels in practice. It might feel more like a thumb stick from a game controller than a trackpoint.

the fdm prints in those demo photos have some real bad first layer extrusion multiplier/bed/meshing issues.

i'd rather there be an option to just buy the board from you for a few bucks less and get some STLs for the needed prints if you're offering prints like that.

I don't think it's bed adhesion or anything. Just looks like a little bit of under extrusion.

Came here for this. Never understood why someone would showcase a product printed in (sub)draft mode. Unless, of course, one is selling this 'rugged' look as a cover-up for cutting corners to speed up mass production times.

Nice idea but the keyboard around the trackpoint is missing. The concept behind the trackpoint is that you can control the mouse pointer while your fingers are resting on asd and ;lkj.

Checkout Tex Shinobi or Shura if you like Keyboards with Trackpoint.

I have a Shinobi, and like it, but I recently got an HHKB Studio w, and really like it too.

This is a nice looking keyboard. But not enough F keys for me:).

Might be possible to embed one of these blackberry cellphone OEM trackpad inside a keycap https://www.ebay.com/itm/132886140650

Ploopy is killing it. The trackpad and knob are also both very very high quality. The open firmware is just so ace, makes these devices so so so much better than everything commercial. The future is open source. Why make life bad for your customers? Why spend so much effort to do so so so much worse than high feature + freedom? QMK or bust. https://ploopy.co/knob/ https://ploopy.co/trackpad/

Keychron and System76 are also on the QMK train with their recent keyboards too. (I'm not 100%, would love to know if each of these can be flashed by users.)

Framework is also on the QMK open-source firmware train, for their keyboard + trackpad combo. Also not a new trend for them: their newer laptops I believe all run Zephyr OS for the embedded controller (EC), & are themselves open source too. Before that, the open-source Chromebook EC. I believe it's possible to compile - flash your own. https://frame.work/blog/previewing-the-framework-wireless-to... https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController/tree...

These companies are both loved, in ways very very few companies are. It's obvious why.

Yes my QMK Keychron can easily compile and flash modified firmware.

I need a variation of this that can be strapped to hand and used with a couple fingers while still leaving the hand and fingers mostly free for normal natural fuction.

also integrate push-to-talk for voice inputs.

use case is to use it while standing up and moving about -- with a large display screen at a distance. Or my specific interest -- work for extended time on a treadmill.

Consider a trackball. I got a Kensington Expert Wireless a while back and really recommend it if you prefer to keep your wrists somewhere static.

Ploopy does make trackballs. I have an adept and it’s great. Inexpensive too.

Unfortunately drag-scroll is not in enough places to make this work without a dedicated wheel but I do have an eye on these

I have mine configured so that pressing the fourth button and moving the ball acts as a scroll wheel, no need for any special support is OS/apps. It shows as a scroll wheel input.

Twiddler is probably the closest thing I can think of that meets those requirements off the shelf.

https://www.mytwiddler.com/

I think the strongest selling point of Ploopy products is their open design. You are free to build this variation yourself.

I am not sure whether I will order one yet (who am I kidding I probably will) but the products I have ordered, the ploopy knob and the trackball have both been great quality and very usable. The knob in particular is very handy size to use alongside a small computer like a Pocket Reform. As others have said, the track point is less useful off the keyboard although it still requires less hand gestures to move like a trackball so I believe for comfort, there is still value. Track points coming back into vogue would be fantastic though, so anything to support that. There is currently someone trying to install a track point into a Pocket Reform. I am surprised no one has tried similar in a framework laptop

The demo product on the 'site looks really shoddy. Untidied-up 3D printing for $65?

The design files and firmware are open source, so you hypothetically produce your own: https://github.com/ploopyco/bean-pointing-stick

Slashvertisement. Though, since it's 3d printed anyway, how about shaping it properly to clip to the edge of a raspberry pi 400/500. Not including a pointing device in those was silly of the rpi foundation.

I'm a long time Thinkpad user and the integrated trackpoint allows my hands to stay on the keyboard and also move the mouse around and click on things.

I don't get benefit of having a trackpoint detached from the keyboard.

What's the advantage over having a mouse or a trackball?

Missed a bet by not calling it something like "Detachable Nipple".

They're doing just fine in the euphemism department

In quite a few languages they are called clitoris in various slangs colloquially. I didn't know the real name for this device for many years.

Bean is also slang for clitoris, at least in the UK. Ploopy has a good sense of humour, the Knob page being the prime example.

Yeah, I knew exactly what this was gonna be before I read the second half of the title.

Now I'm wondering if putting a bean on the knob would be taking it too far.

I'm on the lookout for a wireless ball mouse. I want to relive the glory days of cleaning out the little cylinders on the inside of the mouse without being constrained by wires.

They do make wireless (optical) trackballs. I don't think they attract grunge anywhere near as fast as a real ball mouse though.

I've been using a Logitech trackball for two years now and they're incredibly easy to clean and don't accumulate much dirt on the surface (since they're very smooth), just a little bit on the ceramic balls that they rest on in the case. You just pop out the ball every few weeks, remove the dirt with a cloth and that's it, doesn't take more than a minute.

Tne trackball rides a couple of bearings and they do pick up scrunge. It doesn't affect tracking unless it gets to the sensor window, but you'll feel it getting progressively stiffer.

My Logitech MX Ergo S is resting on my thigh.

> pointing stick mouse. It adds high-precision pointing stick functionality to any setup

I’ve never heard these terms before. What is a pointing stick on a computer?

The nub around the G-B-H keys that doesn't really move but responds to pressure and lets you fly the mouse cursor around the screen with various speeds. Lenovo, Dell, HP, Fujitsu and many others equipped their business laptops with such a pointing device.

And notably as touchpads have improved, most of the makers have stopped including TrackPoints. Lenovo is the main holdout.

Still waiting for Framework to introduce a keyboard with a trackpoint included, but apparently the room allocated for the keyboard is too thin for it to be possible.

Is a trackpoint the same as a pointing stick?

Yeah, TrackPoint is the ThinkPad term for it and very usable. The quality of other brands of pointing stick is highly variable.

I wonder what part are they using for that tiny joystick. The only sources I found for purchase online are salvaged parts from thinkpad keyboards.

3D printed spring, magnet, hall effect sensor by the looks of it.

Tempted to do a ZMK version of this. Wireless would be a lot more practical for me.

Is it possible to retrofit it into the existing open source keyboard ?

Is this your website OP?

This is made for me.

This gives me an idea, does anyone sell these?:

    HEU   N
    DIN    U
     ^      M
    <⌄>   0.,E

With all full-sized keys? i.e. Numpad, arrows and home-end-insert-delete-pgup-pgdn? i.e. all the keys that Apple's laptops fucked plus numpad.

You can all kinds of keypads on AliExpress that are programmable. Some of them even use QMK.

I’m using the caps unlocked CU7 every day; that’s how i discovered it : same frustration as yours!

( then i jumped onto otholinear keeb and now I’m not even bothered by apple anymore and run omarchy on a second hand thinkpad. Same excitement as when i got my first powerbook in the early 2000s…)

Looks like the CU7 has 6 keys. I'd like 10 or so. Maybe something like this:

https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0B1CWJCS5

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005009224555917.html

For just the navigation cluster, I found this but it's a kit: https://keyhive.xyz/shop/navi10

These startup names are starting to get real fuckin' stupid.

Perhaps. But these ones have been around a while. Here's the new HN story, seven years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21263264

Not sure how long you're a startup...

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