- Humblehacker has been laying low for almost a year, hasn't responded to my direct emails. He is in the SF bay area.
- The 4 port hub...yes, I used a cheapie as well. Are you able to offer info on what might be a better unit to use?
- Hot glue the Trackpoint? Crazy! Never thought to do that....I'm curious about the longevity of that connection.
- Mechanical drawing of the Kinesis controller? Is that something that can be shared with us here?
- I'll make a list of relevant controller threads and post them here for you.
- How is the usability of the integrated Trackpoint?
- Do you have RSI? If so, does this help?
- What drawbacks do you notice?
- Any positives other than the obvious?
- Are you on PC or Mac?
I'm also in the SF bay area, actually.
I don't know of a better hub, I had a few sitting around from a previous mod (USB SNES controller w/ integrated 4GB flash drive to store games) where I got extras. The hot glue actually came loose once already, probably because I just didn't use enough of it. I've added more and we'll see how that goes.
I've followed up with Kinesis to get some clarifications and make sure they're cool with the controller drawing getting re-posted, but I'm pretty sure it won't be a problem.
Regarding usability, I'll preface this by noting that I've never been very fond of trackpoints, and I've only used this for about two weeks now. I've had pretty serious RSI issues in both wrists which the kinesis has gone a long way towards solving, but my right wrist still has issues from manipulating a trackpad (I had one of the bigger smartcat ones mounted in the upper middle of the kinesis). I'll have to give it a month or two to be able to tell how much it helps.
The usability is "okay". The script I have for mouse clicks is not ideal and a bit flaky, but I haven't come up wth a better option for buttons. I've also not yet gotten the sensitivity/acceleration parameters to a good spot - the main problem there is that I have a triple monitor setup that's 5760x1600 pixels (first world problems....) and according to IBM's spec sheet the default sensitivity is 'suitable for a 1024x768 screen', and the trackpoint controller settings are tweaked by custom PS/2 commands that PS/2-USB converters can't issue. Building my own controller for the keyboard+trackpoint setup should allow me to solve, or at least minimize, all of these problems.
I'm a Linux user, and the computer I use this keyboard on has AwesomeWM installed, which is already designed to minimize mouse usage.