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Keychron's Nape Pro turns your keyboard into a laptop‑style trackball rig

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Re: Keychron's Nape Pro turns your keyboard into a laptop‑style trackball rig

#41

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

cfraenkel wrote: post #31
fidotron wrote: post #17

People have been putting Blackberry trackballs on QMK builds for quite a while. I'm odd - what I want is a stupidly big trackball, like 4 inches across or so. And it should be able to detect rotation about the vertical axis. It infuriates me how optical tracking systems are designed to provide just translation and no rotation when there's a whole other DoF in play.

You think you do. The issue is it's just about impossible to isolate translation from rotation. You would always be doing just a little rotating every time you touched the ball, whether you wanted to or not. And any time you tried 'rotating', you'd also be moving the cursor. 6DOF devices have been done (ie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceOrb_360 or https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/12416/Logitech-Cyber... ).…

rotation works pretty well for scrolling on the kensington slimblade with a little bit of getting-used-to. when it detects rotation, it stops moving the cursor.

Re: Keychron's Nape Pro turns your keyboard into a laptop‑style trackball rig

#42

Post by adolph »

nosrepa wrote: post #26
adolph wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, seeing this product's very angular non-3d-printed yet-prototype design brought back memories of the days when the default portable hardware interface didn't always include a pointing device and thus there were these clip-on trackballs, like below. Maybe some of the weirdest were things that looked like small mice that were linked and position-sensed by a bar linkage to the laptop. I can't find a reference to one…

You are thinking of the HP Omnibook. https://youtu.be/xlXr37mggUE?t=4m50s

Many thanks! Seeing that mouse-like thing pop out with the "mouse eject button" was very satisfactory.

Having not seen that hardware interface today while reviewing Wikipedia entries for pointer devices left me questioning my memory like the Fruit of the Loom cornucopia or "Berenstein Bears".

Re: Keychron's Nape Pro turns your keyboard into a laptop‑style trackball rig

#43

Post by semi-extrinsic »

locknitpicker wrote: post #18
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #11

A year ago I went down the rabbit hole of looking into custom trackball-keyboard integrations. Ploopy, Charybdis, Dactyl, CCK-ball, etc. My final boring conclusion is that what I had already been doing for the past 20 years is much cheaper and gets me 99.99% of the way: All you need is a regular ~$50 trackball and a regular ~$100 keyboard without a numpad. (You can have an overlay for that, if you need it.) As someon…

> If this works better for you than a Logitech or Kensington trackball, sweet, use it. But so far all the reviews are like "I've never used a trackball, but this looks cool". Most people never saw a trackball, let alone used it. Mainly because either your PC comes with a mouse, or you use a laptop which comes with a touchpad. Your regular ~$50 sucks because it follows the form factor of a mouse even though you don't…

> Your regular ~$50 sucks because it follows the form factor of a mouse even though you don't have to move it around.

I don't understand - between the Kensington Orbit, Kensington TB550, Elecom HUGE, Nulea M505, M511 & M514 and the Micropack V05M - what ergonomic form factors are we missing?

Re: Keychron's Nape Pro turns your keyboard into a laptop‑style trackball rig

#44

Post by darkteflon »

tortilla wrote: post #33
Topgamer7 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did build a charybdis, and I daily it. Its been great typing wise. I don't have any wrist issues anymore. The trackball I don't use for any precision actions. Its useful if I want to hit a tab, or move to the other monitor. But trying to hit small links for example is painful. (That being said I am using the stock bearings, which don't seem to work well) It was a significant expense for a keyboard, especially being…

I'm enjoying my ZSA Voyager and Navigator (trackball) combo. Out of picture, I also have a Magic Trackpad (right) and Logitech MX Anywhere 3 (left). I like to switch up my hand movements. https://i.postimg.cc/TYMSMCT1/IMG-1528.jpg

Hello, fellow ZSA Voyager plus dual-weild aficionado! It’s great, isn’t it? I saw [this](https://evantravers.com/articles/2023/04/06/magsafe-tenting-...) here recently and promptly bought some mini-tripods and MagSafe adapters. Access to arbitrary tenting angles has been a big plus. I also have a 3D printed deck for it that sits over my MacBook keyboard and is quite nice. Don’t want to lose access to my Miryoku layout when on the move! Especially home row chording.

I also went down the switches rabbit hole and ended up with lighter weight switches under my pinkies, which I find quite pleasant.

I also dual-wield a Magic Trackpad (outside left) and Logitech Lift (which I have found to be vastly better for my wrist than a normal mouse, since it requires much less unnatural rotation).

I’m also looking forward to the ZSA trackpad attachment for the Voyager. Interested to see whether it’s an improvement on the excellent Magic Trackpad. As an avid Magic Trackpad user, what do you think of the trackball?

All in all, though, this kind of setup feels like something of final destination, don’t you think? No more desire to tinker and can see myself using it this way for decades - just replacing switches if / when they fail. I even have some spare keycaps which I bought from Tai-Hao (who manufacture the original keycaps, I believe). I bought the blanks from ZSA then sort of regretted it. They look so darn cool but made the transition to Miryoku harder than it needed to be.

Goodness gracious look how much I’ve written about my keyboard. My wife would find this very amusing.

Re: Keychron's Nape Pro turns your keyboard into a laptop‑style trackball rig

#45

Post by semi-extrinsic »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #11

A year ago I went down the rabbit hole of looking into custom trackball-keyboard integrations. Ploopy, Charybdis, Dactyl, CCK-ball, etc. My final boring conclusion is that what I had already been doing for the past 20 years is much cheaper and gets me 99.99% of the way: All you need is a regular ~$50 trackball and a regular ~$100 keyboard without a numpad. (You can have an overlay for that, if you need it.) As someon…

Too late to add this as an edit to my post, but: I should have specified I do a fair bit of CAD and image editing work in addition to coding, so I need a high quality pointing device.

If you just use the pointing device for switching windows and clicking links/icons, maybe it's a different story.

Re: Keychron's Nape Pro turns your keyboard into a laptop‑style trackball rig

#47

Post by vunderba »

fidotron wrote: post #17

People have been putting Blackberry trackballs on QMK builds for quite a while. I'm odd - what I want is a stupidly big trackball, like 4 inches across or so. And it should be able to detect rotation about the vertical axis. It infuriates me how optical tracking systems are designed to provide just translation and no rotation when there's a whole other DoF in play.

My family had one of the Microsoft EasyBall's growing up - that thing was absolutely huge.

https://imgur.com/a/Bu6aiUU

The only use we got out of it was as a MAME controller for Marble Madness.

Re: Keychron's Nape Pro turns your keyboard into a laptop‑style trackball rig

#48

Post by tortilla »

Topgamer7 wrote: post #34
tortilla wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm enjoying my ZSA Voyager and Navigator (trackball) combo. Out of picture, I also have a Magic Trackpad (right) and Logitech MX Anywhere 3 (left). I like to switch up my hand movements. https://i.postimg.cc/TYMSMCT1/IMG-1528.jpg

Do you find you use the trackball for precise movements? I wonder if a more polished product is any different than the Charybdis.

I used the trackball for about 2 weeks straight when I got it. I felt I could do about 95% of movements I wanted pretty easily. Became like second nature. But I prefer the Magic Trackpad for its gestures. So basically I have 3 pointing devices on my desk now (LOL).

Re: Keychron's Nape Pro turns your keyboard into a laptop‑style trackball rig

#49

Post by tortilla »

darkteflon wrote: post #44
tortilla wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm enjoying my ZSA Voyager and Navigator (trackball) combo. Out of picture, I also have a Magic Trackpad (right) and Logitech MX Anywhere 3 (left). I like to switch up my hand movements. https://i.postimg.cc/TYMSMCT1/IMG-1528.jpg

Hello, fellow ZSA Voyager plus dual-weild aficionado! It’s great, isn’t it? I saw [this]( https://evantravers.com/articles/2023/04/06/magsafe-tenting-... ) here recently and promptly bought some mini-tripods and MagSafe adapters. Access to arbitrary tenting angles has been a big plus. I also have a 3D printed deck for it that sits over my MacBook keyboard and is quite nice. Don’t want to lose access to my Miryoku lay…

I love the the Voyager when I want to really focus or if I'm going to code for a long time (limits my arm movements and I'm more intentional). When I'm doom scrolling or being creative, I end up using the mouse (I'm looking at the Lift too) or the trackpad more.

Yes, it's my end game but I was pretty tempted by the go60 because of the wireless nature. https://www.moergo.com/pages/go60

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