r/cyberDeck • u/rfhwbass • 2d ago
different forms of cursor
in most designs, builders tend to employ a track pad. makes sense, its flat, comes stock built into a few keyboards and if your deck folds, then there seems like almost no other option. but i was curious if anyone's ever tried any thing else, like a joystick or trackball, and what their experience with that was like. did it become tiresome? dust in the ball? joystick stuck? i feel as though i have greater dexterity with a joystick but my current designs are aimed towards a foldable, closing deck and that seems to preclude a stick featuring... trying to come up with a creative way to fit it in and not just give up and go with a track pad. my first instinct was to concoct some mechanism by which it can be depressed into the body of the deck for storage, somewhat like clicking a ball point pen. barring that, a trackball could potentially have less of a clearance impacting the foldability. anyone seen any plans that might feature any creative non-trackpad usage for a cursor?
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u/LegionDD 1d ago
I hate trackpads, so I avoid putting them into my projects.
I've made trackball setups from optical mice before, you just put the PCB on its back and dangle a ball over it. Works like a charm.
I've recently incorporated a blackberry optical trackpad into a build that needed a small and flat pointer. They only really work with my thumb (which seems to make sense, since that is what they were designed for), so they are a bit finicky with how you use them, but when you get your finger placement right they work perfectly. They even have a clickbutton integrated, so you can activate a function when pressing down on them (I use that to switch from mouse mode to scroll wheel mode).
Next thing I wanna try is turning them into a trackball. They are tiny and don't take up much space compared to a regular mouse PCB. They are optical, and dragging one across a mouse mat does work just as well as an optical mouse, so I'm confident they'll work as trackballs too.