I'm curious why none of these split designs ever feature a trackball on the right half integrated into the board somehow. There are plenty of FOSS trackball designs, it seems like it would just make sense, especially for ergonomic designs, to have a trackball set up where you don't have to move your hand over to move a cursor.
Also I don't understand why they're always missing function keys.
check out the 'tracktyls'.. The 'beast' (1) gets all the attention, but I actually like qqurn's stuff (2)(3) better.
He even has a nice git repo with dactyls with trackball, electric eraser, and button based thumb clusters(4)
Oh - and the 'missing function keys' are because most of these boards are made to be used with a firmware like QMK - which lets you have 'layers'. So you have a layer with cursor movement, a layer with function, etc.
The Ultimate Hacking Keyboard supports a trackball or trackpad attached to the right half. The expansion modules just recently became available though so it may be hard to find reviews or people with hands on experience.
Function keys are trivial. I already have 1 through 0, and two more keys on the same row, so I map them to Layer 1, which I have both a momentary and toggle version of on my deck. I put F11 to the left and F12 to the right, not that it matters.
So for just F5, it's as easy to type as %. For, say, Ctrl-Alt-F4, I hit layer, then Ctrl-Alt-4, then layer again.
I grant that someone might make much heavier use of function keys and find this inconvenient. I don't miss them in the slightest.
An integrated trackball might be nice, although I'm not sure where to put it that would be comfortable. I have a trackball to the right of the keyboard, this suits me fine.
This would solve one of the biggest problems I have with split keyboards; where do I put my mouse? At least I'm using a Logitech Ergo Trackball, which means that I can predictability move from the keyboard to the mouse, but there is no easy way of positioning a keyboard like the ErgoDox EZ while still comfortably using the mouse as well. I ended up switching to a smaller Razer BlackWidow Lite as it allows for a more comfortable keyboard-mouse workflow for me.
I put a trackpad to the left of my keyboard and taught myself to mouse with my left, as well as right, hand, and it's been a big improvement. Right hand is still stronger but my left hand is now functional for many tasks.
Add a long time thinkpad user and someone who has a mech keyboard (unicomp) with a trackpoint, I thought these would be common place... Still waiting for a trackpoint but I have a nice big CST trackball between my split keyboard until then...
Trackpoint modules are harvestable from Thinkpad keyboards, and are well-supported in QMK (the most prolific keyboard firmware). I've used them a lot on custom splits, and they work quite well.
Are they well supported in both AVR and ARM/chibios versions of QMK? Are there any differences in how they work on a thinkpad and with QMK?
On my old thinkpad the cursor would sometimes start drifting and you have to release the trackpoint for it to settle - is that something that is handled by the firmware or inside the trackpoint module?
Asking as someone who plans to build a custom keyboard (preferably with arm mcu) and have a trackpoint module waiting with the pinout figured out.
The point of a split keyboard is that you don't need to.move your arms, which are relaxed, or your hands. You only move your fingers, and keep your eyes away from the keyboard.
For that, you want such amount of keys which you can comfortably hit by moving just your fingers. It's normally 3 rows and 6-7 columns. And say 5+5 keys in the thumb clusters.
I personally find a layout like Kyria [1] optimal for such use.
You can just place a regular trackball between the keyboard-halves. Or use a keyboard-mouse if the keyboard-firmware supports it (which most of them should nowadays). A small trackpad is quite expensive and complicated, so most probably don't add them to an already expensive device because of this.
The best build log I've ever seen for a split keyboard featuring a trackball is the Oddball 2. I discovered it yesterday. It has a parametric design that's editable in OpenSCAD, so if it's too small for you, adding more keys should be easy.
Usually you don't want to move your hands a lot, else you'd be fine with a non-split keyboard.
But then there's very little room to put a pointer control device. With the bulky mechanical switches, you have virtually no room to squeeze in a trackpoint, like on laptops. Also, you want the space comfortably reachable by thumbs for keys.
And if you agree to lift and move your hand anyway, why not use a mouse of your choosing?
I think that would narrow the sales to whom both like that keyboard and the chosen trackball. Some would love it, a lot would like the keyboard but prefer a different trackball or location for it. Or would after a while.
Agreed on the rarity of integrated trackballs. I’ve got my numbers and f keys on layers. I don’t miss lots of dedicated keys for things that layers do well. Ymmv, but layers are why f keys are often omitted.
Also I don't understand why they're always missing function keys.