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Jeder neocat_floof_googly_woozy neocat_flag_agender 🔜 Mizukon @jeder@miau.jeder.pl
3y
rambling about using and owning ploopy mini for over half a year, long post ploopy mini is a nice solid trackball, however there are weird little things that sometimes just drive you crazy, i have a prebuilt (this will be crucial in later parts of the post)

EDIT after another 1.5 years: the switches are dogshit do not buy this if you want something that is gonna last you more than 2 years without your intervention

- whole thing is 3d printed, so quality can be funny, in my case, sensor shines through bottom of the trackball

- it could make use of some mx ergo-like rubber coating on top (seriously, it's like the only thing i miss from mx ergo, besides wireless but can't have everything ig), which i might or might not do at some point

- you'll probably need one of those gel-filled mousepads if you don't like having a hanging wrist, without the mousepad, its not that comfortable

- scroll is often freaking out after booting to os (and just plugging it in), until you scroll yourself

- the sensor is a downgrade from ploopy classic, it tops out at 1375 DPI with lower polling rate, while the one from the classic can do 10K DPI and 1000Hz polling rate, and iirc you can set more granular DPI overall, rather than just 375-1375 DPI in 125 DPI jumps

- related to previous one, i forgot the proper name for it, but the sensor itself is unable to catch up if you spin the ball too fast, though you need to put effort in that, so it's not noticeable if you don't just spin it like that

- stock firmware for prebuilt comes with just one layer filled it, and 1375 DPI as the default, which means that you need to flash your firmware as soon as you get it, because otherwise it's not that usable if you don't like huge speed by default

- drag scroll (ability to use ball as scroll) is great, though imo hold-by-default makes more sense than toggle-by-default

- diagonals in drag scroll are glitchy

- here's something that is most likely different on every mini, getting it to boot to bootloader is very simple in theory (hold the button right to the ball and plug the cable), but in practice its very tedious, and you'll probably wear out the microusb before it boots, you can probably alleviate it by binding a reset button in VIA, but:
-- the mentioned VIA keymap is not the default and you need to flash it if you bought the trackball as prebuilt, which brings us to the previous point, on DIY kit, you need to flash it yourself so this doesn't apply here really
-- other option is to short pins on the board, which, you guessed it, means disassembly, not something i am fond of, since i am a lazy fuck

- while i am on the topic of disassembling and DIY kit, from what i have seen with nikuw and his friend, the kit itself is kinda fucky to build, as proven by him and his friend, some of it is probably/most likely skill issue though

- back to VIA, for some reason, there's a bug where the keycodes are shifted by one to the left on every layer above 0, and that means that the left-most key from layer 1 is gone in the editor, and you need to redo the whole layout everytime you change something in VIA; i haven't checked if it got fixed during these 6 months, i saw some commit regarding VIA changes, so maybe...?
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luna the doggie neofox_snug therian @lunareclipse@snug.moe
3mo
re: rambling about using and owning ploopy mini for over half a year, long post @jeder mmm I was looking at these trackballs out of curiosity, but they seem to kinda over promise on the product pages.

The store ToS says if the shipping company fucks up you're responsible for pursuing damages and not them. wlfAghast

They have a blog post about why they don't make kits without 3d printed parts, and one of the arguments is that they are sooo hard to print. While the marketing page shows 3d printing new parts as a big selling point? Though their other argument is that they cannot support a device properly if they didn't ship you everything to get it working which is fair enough on its own.

I found a Reddit thread where someone fixed the loud bearings problem that the store page actually warns about (note: store page, right before checkout, in the depths of the description, not the product page), by... replacing the bearings with higher quality ones? Not a great look for a very expensive device.

And now your post talking about the switches being shit.

And a bunch of threads I now accidentally found about the ball bearings in some of these rusting to the point of being unusable after 1-2 years.

neofox_melt

I guess if I decide to try getting a trackball it's gonna be some Kensington, the Ploopy ones don't seem like they're very reliable long term.
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Jeder neocat_floof_googly_woozy neocat_flag_agender 🔜 Mizukon @jeder@miau.jeder.pl
3mo
re: rambling about using and owning ploopy mini for over half a year, long post @lunareclipse yea ploopy mini is quite an experience, and most modding goes towards the classics unfortunately
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Jeder neocat_floof_googly_woozy neocat_flag_agender 🔜 Mizukon @jeder@miau.jeder.pl
3mo
re: rambling about using and owning ploopy mini for over half a year, long post @lunareclipse and even now, mini has at least one mod that should've been there from the start, on stock the way of activating switches is uh, less than normal to say the least, you have to push it diagonally iirc? and mine is in the process of getting that mod, alongside of new switches
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luna the doggie neofox_snug therian @lunareclipse@snug.moe
3mo
re: rambling about using and owning ploopy mini for over half a year, long post @jeder Sometimes I wonder how much is repairability worth when the device breaks so fast you'll spend more time and money on repairing it than you would on getting a less repairable device and it lasting significantly longer before needing a replacement...
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Jeder neocat_floof_googly_woozy neocat_flag_agender 🔜 Mizukon @jeder@miau.jeder.pl
3mo
re: rambling about using and owning ploopy mini for over half a year, long post @lunareclipse yeah that's the problem with "repairability" for me, oftentimes the product is so lackluster that this is the only "feature" they can list because they made such a crappy project that they would rather release the files and let you fix it on your own
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Jeder neocat_floof_googly_woozy neocat_flag_agender 🔜 Mizukon @jeder@miau.jeder.pl
3mo
re: rambling about using and owning ploopy mini for over half a year, long post @lunareclipse I'd plug framework into this but they are much worse than this
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Jeder neocat_floof_googly_woozy neocat_flag_agender 🔜 Mizukon @jeder@miau.jeder.pl
3mo
re: rambling about using and owning ploopy mini for over half a year, long post @lunareclipse and like, don't get me wrong, I love the idea of having qmk on the mouse because I can just put anything in there, but it comes with very weird drawbacks, like, some kvms just do not think it's a mouse?? and don't let you use it with the mouse port, so you have to use the universal one instead, which you could've used for something more useful
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Jeder neocat_floof_googly_woozy neocat_flag_agender 🔜 Mizukon @jeder@miau.jeder.pl
3mo
re: rambling about using and owning ploopy mini for over half a year, long post @lunareclipse but then I also find this remnant of ps/2 era to be very weird to be desired in kvms that they still do it with usb for some goddamn reason
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luna the doggie neofox_snug therian @lunareclipse@snug.moe
3mo
re: rambling about using and owning ploopy mini for over half a year, long post @jeder I've been looking at other trackballs a bit and am coming to the conclusion that despite the issues, the ploopy devices may be still good when compared to the others.

Kensington doesn't seem to have Linux drivers, and some of the trackballs don't seem to have too great longevity either...

So having a device that you can at least attempt to fix or modify may be better
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Jeder neocat_floof_googly_woozy neocat_flag_agender 🔜 Mizukon @jeder@miau.jeder.pl
3mo
re: rambling about using and owning ploopy mini for over half a year, long post @lunareclipse yeah
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Vil until it's Vil 🔜linuksowa.pl 🔜piwo.sh @wilmhit@awawa.cat
2y
re: rambling about using and owning ploopy mini for over half a year, long post @jeder i reposted it but this is a new instance and only you are following me (i havn't migrated yet).

Have fun reading what you just wrote i guess
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Jeder neocat_floof_googly_woozy neocat_flag_agender 🔜 Mizukon @jeder@miau.jeder.pl
3y
rambling about using and owning ploopy mini for over half a year, long post oh and the most fun part: if you want to buy it and you live in europe, get ready for some hefty shipping costs and import taxes 🙂 canada momento
good thing i imported it through nikuw's friend
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Trinsec @trinsec@trinsec.org
2y
re: rambling about using and owning ploopy mini for over half a year, long post @jeder Just stumbled on your post. I'm a trackball user but never knew about ploopy, that's actually pretty cool. Just a shame they're so expensive, I probably could buy 4 M570s for one ploopy. 😬

Still pretty damn cool.
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