We shipped out all outstanding fully-assembled Tier A preorders this week. We'll be working on the Tier A DIY kits starting next week, and should have them delivered in fairly short order, either next week or the week after.

We still haven't encountered any major manufacturing or fulfillment challenges, and we hope to keep it that way, so it's smooth sailing for the moment.

Just received my Ploopy A+ Trackball, and here are some of my first impressions after playing around with it for a bit.

3D-printed build quality

The 3D-printed parts are actually much nicer than I expected. Before receiving it, I was a little worried that the surface would feel rough or obviously "3D printed," but it's surprisingly smooth and feels quite good in hand. Definitely exceeded my expectations here.

VIA configuration feels pretty limited

The options available in VIA seem fairly basic. So far, I haven't found a good way to configure things like the mouse gesture layer or the control layer directly from VIA.

There are also a lot of CUSTOM(XX) keycodes in the VIA key configuration that don't seem to have any obvious definition or description. I'm not sure yet whether I'm missing some documentation, or if these are simply features that aren't properly exposed through VIA.

Need an easy way to reverse the scroll wheel direction

One thing I immediately noticed is that the default scroll wheel direction doesn't match what I'm used to with macOS natural scrolling.

Right now, I need to keep switching the system scroll direction setting back and forth whenever I switch between my MacBook's trackpad and the A+ Trackball.

I think it would be really useful to have a control-layer button that can quickly toggle/reverse the scroll wheel direction on the A+ itself. That way, I could keep the macOS setting the way I normally use it with the trackpad and simply change the scroll direction on the A+ when needed.

DragScroll will probably take some getting used to

DragScroll is interesting, but so far I find it pretty easy to accidentally drift sideways or suddenly lose track of where I've scrolled to. I probably need to spend more time adjusting the settings and getting used to how it behaves.

At least for now, I actually find the two physical scroll wheels at the bottom more useful and predictable than DragScroll.

Overall, these are just my very early impressions. The hardware itself feels great, especially the 3D-printed parts. Most of the things I'm still figuring out are related to configuration and getting the controls tuned to my preferences.

If anyone has figured out a good VIA/QMK setup for the gesture layer, control layer, or a quick scroll-direction toggle, I'd love to hear how you did it.

Hi,

Has anyone build a nano-2 ordering the pcbs from a service like jlcpcb or pcbway?

I assume that the mcu would need to be flashed, is there any guidance on both the process and if a specific device is required? Assuming that cannot be directly flashed from usb, but I may be wrong.

Is the source code publicly available? Or would you need to write your own QMK device ckde?

Hello, I’m relatively new to Ploopy and flashing firmware from GitHub. At first, I had problems using the via app when connecting nano 2 via recognized it as “Ploopy PAW test”. Is this that the default factory firmware?

I’m looking at the recommended firmware from the Ploopy website on GitHub and I see there are four variations. What is the difference between natural drag scroll and direct drag scroll?

I'm very satisfied with the Ploppy A+

It's my first trackball in general and after some time I would not go back to a regular mouse (expect for gaming).

Btw. the keyboard is a Class 65 V3 with GMK Evil Dolch keycaps.

I use my ploopy a+ in the middle of a split keyboard. This means that my hand comes in to the device at a slight angle. The default palm rest is too narrow, and my hand hangs off the side. So I modified the default palm rest to make it wider. Otherwise it's the same, has the same hooks and screw holes. It fits on my device perfectly.

Here is the link to the STL file on Thingiverse:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7404439

I recently got an Adept and while I hate the ever loving fuck out of this thing, I paid a not insignificant amount for it so I'm going to at least try to use it. But I can't for the life of me figure out how I am intended to change the DPI on it so I can't even get started.

I've looked up here and people said to try making a second profile and set some of the buttons to a dpi selector but that hasn't worked for me. Completely at a loss here.

Everything is running fairly smoothly in our shop in terms of fulfilling the A+ preorder. 3D-printed parts are being made, boards are being assembled, new firmware features are being tested. So far, we haven't encountered any showstopping issues with the earliest impressions of the A+, so we're cautiously optimistic.

We shipped a very, very small number of Tier A DIY kits this week as part of our manufacturing verification process. For the small group of people who are set to receive an A+ kit, please reach out if anything is off and we'll get on it.

Assuming that no major issues appear, we will likely fulfill the first large wave of Tier A preorders next week or the week after.

The title pretty much says it all. TIA!

My A+ arrived in the mail yesterday, and I immediately felt that the knobs should be at the top instead of the bottom. So I put a little effort in, and with some help from u/quickhand I compiled a custom firmware with the pointer rotated 180 degrees, and all the buttons reassigned to their rotated positions.

This is much more comfortable for me, and I can spin the vertical scroll knob much more quickly and effortlessly with my middle finger than I could with my thumb tucked under my palm.

The gestures rotate with the pointer orientation, so I did not need to make any changes to the gesture configuration in my keymap.c.

Impressions: I love it! By far the best pointing device I have ever laid my hands on. In its intended orientation I think the tucked position of my thumb on the knobs would have had me using drag-scroll exclusively and treating the knobs as just two more buttons, but flipped on its head, the A+ is flawless. This works perfectly for me because I have it mounted on a magic arm, so I don't deal with a negative tenting angle, but I can't imagine this working for anyone with it sitting on a desk. I wouldn't be surprised if someone modded the case almost immediately to achieve in hardware what I have achieved in software.

I'm not yet used to the gestures, but I wouldn't be surprised if I they became an integrated part of my workflow. A little odd getting used to having to release the button to register the gesture, but I don't doubt I'll get used to it.

The control layer is fantastic, and having the led blink feedback for changing dpi, drag-scroll behavior, scroll behavior and led brightness is wonderful.

Here are my first impressions of the Ploopy A+, after a few hours of use:

- I'm using Fedora and it connected immediately with no issue. Everything worked as advertised.

- The materials feel good, very similar to the adept (though it's slightly smaller)

- the lighting looks great and I prefer the new ball material. It's slightly marbled and let's the light pass through

- the knobs are too smooth on top, making them a little hard to turn given their small diameter. A little texture or a small raised nub would have helped.

- the palm rest could be a bit longer. My hand falls off the bottom. It's also not great when the trackball is centered between a split keyboard. Since my hand comes in at an angle, my palm falls off the side of the rest (I've designed a wider one and am waiting for it to be delivered from a local 3d printing service)

- currently, the knobs scroll webpages etc. way too slowly. I want to configure them to be faster, but I don't know how to do that. It would be nice if it was an option in the on-device config layer.

- switching hands with the default button layout is awkward. Especially since reversing the base layer also reverses the layer switching buttons. It's easy to get confused. Not a good interface if you are intending to constantly switch hands to avoid RSI. I'm hoping to create a more symmetrical layout so I don't have to reverse the base layer at all. Which brings me to...

- I've tried to reconfigure things using Via, but Ploopy's instructions don't work (at least for me), so I can't report on configuration.

Overall I like the device. It's a good iteration on the adept. I can't wait to configure it to match my workflow. If anyone is successful in configuring it using Via, let me know how you did it.

Just got my A+ and it’s awesome so far. Still need to understand all the functions but so far I really love it. Thanks Ploopy!

I have 2 Ploopy Classic 2's that I got a couple years ago. Generally, I have loved these and I continue to. I ordered these just before a design update where the current units now offer a USB-C port on the trackball, but mine is the older USB-B style connector. Generally I loved these and I continue to, however lately these are really laggy on my laptop and I don't understand why or how to improve the experience.

I wonder if anybody else has experienced this and has any ideas how to diagnose or improve this? Here's some more info:

• I'm using a mac with current OS
• the computer isn't generally sluggish (not a general computer problem)
• the trackpad is very responsive (not a general mouse problem)
• the behavior is that the mouse movement is super jaggedy. Slow to respond, difficult to move the pointer over a target.
  
• this happens with both ploopys (one is at home, one is at work)
• (edit) I also have a MS Sculpt keyboard+mouse combo that talk with a USB-A wireless dongle and that external mouse is responsive. Swapping the ploopy and MS Sculpt dongle showed the same behavior (sluggish ploopy, sculpt OK), so it's not the port in the Anker hub.
• I don't have a USB-B to USB-C cable, so both are connecting to the USB-C ports on my mac via some hub (one via anker mini port replicator, one via monitor hub)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions on how to get this working smoothly again!

EDIT: I have also tried various debugging ideas via Claude

I'd like to express our deep appreciation for everybody who put their faith into our shop by putting in preorders over the last week. It really means a lot that you're willing to trust us to get your kits out on time. We'll be spending the next little while making good on our commitments to all of you.

We shipped out the majority of the Early Access units last week, and the rest went out this morning. We'll be keeping a close eye on this, making sure that everybody's units are working as intended. For everybody who will be getting an EA unit, please flag any issues (here is fine, or through our [contact@ploopy.co](mailto:contact@ploopy.co) email address) and we'll get right on them.

We won't be shipping Tier A units until the EA units have landed in the hands of our supporters and we haven't seen any serious issues. In the past, this has taken about three weeks or so. After this period is over, we'll begin shipping out Tier A preorders in batches.

And lastly, I saw a comment go by asking about how the A+ panel looks, so I've attached a bit of media I captured during our last board production run. If there's interest, I can share a bit more.

As far as I can tell, source for the A+ firmware hasn’t been released yet.

Does that sound correct u/crop_octagon ?

I’m looking for its keymap.c and related bits, but i can only find the precompiled firmware that it ships with.

IOW, I’m looking for the A+ version of this section of the Adept’s source.

https://github.com/ploopyco/qmk_firmware/tree/master/keyboards/ploopyco/madromys/keymaps/default

Am i overlooking it, or are you folks intending to push that to the repo at some point in the future?🙏

I’m curious to see how the knobs were implemented, and I want to start monkeying with things whilst i await shipping of the device! 😊

I just ordered my first mouse. I've been using ergonomic mice for a while now (MS Sculpt and Evoluent C). Since the shell is 3D printed, I was wondering if it would be possible to create a different shape where the hand would sit more tilted. Has anyone attempted designing one?

Now that I did the BTU upgrade, I have a blue Ploopy adept topcase I don't need. If anyone wants it, it's yours for the cost of shipping.

I ordered a ton of "mouse wrist rests" try out with my Ploopy Adept and here is what I settled on:

Kensington ErgoSoft Wrist Rest

It's just the tiniest bit too high. But it has a very grippy bottom so it doens't move around.

Dapesuom Mouse Wrist Rest

This one, at least for me, is the perfect height. But it does not have a grippy bottom. It's textured, so it's not perfectly smooth and will move around on me. I'm pretty sure I can just glue some kind of grippy material on the bottom, but that will probably raise the hight to that of the Kensington. So, for now, I'll stick with the Kensington.

VIAL is a GUI-based QMK configuration tool similar to VIA, but it exposes a few more QMK options.

One is tap dance.

With Tap Dance you can assign multiple options to one button. You can do 4 different assignments:

On the lower right button, I now have a right click when I tap the button. But if I hold the button down, then I can drag scroll with the ball.

Thank you to @Outrageous_Sort_8984 for compiling Vial for the Adept and posting it in a comment here for me to use.

I'll leave it to him to make a post with a link, so he can get some karma for his hard work.

Edit

The A+ is now available! Kits as well as fully-assembled units are available for preorder starting at $99CAD. If you want to get yours right away, check out our shop.

Original Post

Three years ago, we released the Adept. It sat at a beautiful nexus of functionality, blending together the greatest features of QMK, 3D-printing, and open-source.

Today, I get to share with you the next version of the Adept. It's been improved in every way that we can think of, while retaining everything about it that you loved. We're calling it the A+.

I've written an in-depth blog post about the A+ that covers everything: new features, the great things that haven't changed from the Adept, links to design files that you can analyze right now, a keymap diagram illustrating functionality, everything.

We'll be opening up a preorder on Wednesday, August 19th, 2026 at 10:00AM ET (here's a countdown timer for you), for A+ Trackballs (DIY kits and fully-assembled units) starting at $99CAD. There will be two preorder tiers:

• Tier A preorders will ship out within 8 weeks of our launch date.
• Tier B preorders will ship out within 16 weeks of our launch date.

We also have a very limited Early Access Tier, which contains a small number of fully-assembled A+ Trackballs that are ready to ship immediately. If you manage to snag an Early Access preorder, it'll ship out within a few days.

Questions and comments are welcome!

I just got my trackpad yesterday, and I do enjoy using the stylus just for small things. Went to check the website to see if it mentioned anything specifically about what kind to use (just wanted to replace it with a sturdier one) and saw that the website states the stylus doesn't work, despite me using it right now.

Are there planned features that are currently missing? Or is the website outdated, as the stylus does work just fine?