Touchpads, or trackpads, have been around since the 1980s. Today, you can often find them in laptops and notebook computers as pointing devices. With no moving parts, a trackpad are easy to integrate into the body of a portable computer. they’re much smaller than the traditional mouse. Until the advent of multitouch and gestures over the past two decades, though, they were generally poor substitutes for an actual mouse. These days, trackpads have enough features that some users prefer them even on their desktop computers. If you’re that type of person and don’t want to shell out a big pile of money for an Apple, Logitech, or other off-the-shelf trackpad you can always build your own.
This trackpad, called the Ploopy, is completely open source, including the 3D prints needed to build the case. Even the touch surface is 3D printed, using a special sheet and printing the trackpad face down so that the surface takes on a smooth, comfortable texture. Inside the device is a Raspberry Pi Pico running QMK, a popular open-source firmware for mice and keyboards we often see on mechanical keyboard builds. The only part most of us won’t find in our parts bin is the Microchip ATMXT1066TD touchscreen controller. But once it’s all assembled and a firmware flashed to the Pi, it’s ready to go.
For anyone looking to build one of these from scratch there are a set of instructions at a separate page that document the build process. There’s also a Reddit thread with some active discussion. Trackpads have come a long way from the barely-usable, resistive types that were more common in the early days of laptops. Most of us have gotten used to the high-quality devices available now so much so that it’s hard to let them go. There are some other non-standard pointer devices that some others have a hard time letting go of, too.
This articles is written by : Fady Askharoun Samy Askharoun
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