Trackball for a paraplegic person

[wetto]

Gentlemen, I come here to ask for a suggestion of a good BIG trackball that has mouse buttons and can be used to "click" as well.

In this case, I need a trackball that could be used by my paraplegic friend. He can't use his fingers, but he can move his arm a bit, but I believe he can use a trackball properly.

In this case, what I was thinking on buying was the BigKeys Trackball:



But aren't there better choices in the market? I mean, it would also help me if he could also "click" by applying a bit of strenght towards the trackball. He's already using a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro Joystick on his left hand to move on FPS games, but it's quite hard for him to keep on using my Corsair M60 mouse (on which he oftenly clicks the right button instead of the left one, since he can't control his fingers).



His current setup is as follows:

Left Hand: Logitech Extreme 3D Pro with axis configured as WASD.

Voice: Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition software configured with certain voice-macros, spell mode (any letter he says will be inputted, for example, if he says B, it'll type B after 1 second).

Right Hand: Corsair M60 mice (only mice he could even use. I tried several, and since this one is the one that fits his hand the most and the OMRON switches are easy to press, he can use it but he oftenly presses the right button instead of the left one when applying strenght).


And I plan to buy an arcade joystick as soon as possible for his right hand, so he can use several more buttons and also have a more confortable joystick for playing games.

[hoggy]

I've not come across any trackballs that do that myself...

Have you come across dwell-clicking software?  You move the pointer to where you want to click, wait a mo and the software will click for you.  Don't want to click, don't move the mouse.

It's possible to configure the capslock key to act as the left mouse button using autohotkey, maybe that would help instead.

If he's using windows, there's a setting that automatically moves the pointer to the default button when a dialog appears.

http://www.oneswitch.org.uk/ is worth a look if you're looking a for a joystick.  Plenty of ideas of modifying joysticks.  In particular, his use of joy2key might give you some ideas.

I know all of this just skirts around your question, but I hope it helps.

[wetto]

I've not come across any trackballs that do that myself...

Have you come across dwell-clicking software?  You move the pointer to where you want to click, wait a mo and the software will click for you.  Don't want to click, don't move the mouse.

It's possible to configure the capslock key to act as the left mouse button using autohotkey, maybe that would help instead.

If he's using windows, there's a setting that automatically moves the pointer to the default button when a dialog appears.

http://www.oneswitch.org.uk/ is worth a look if you're looking a for a joystick.  Plenty of ideas of modifying joysticks.  In particular, his use of joy2key might give you some ideas.

I know all of this just skirts around your question, but I hope it helps.

Thank you, I am already using JoyToKey on the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro and about the question of "clicking when you move the mouse", that's a bit complicated because I want him to be able to play FPS games again.

He's suffered an accident about only 10 months ago, and nowadays he can't even get out of the bed and barely can moves his arms. All he does the entire day is browse the web on his laptop. Only a few weeks ago were we able to make this "adaptation" with the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro so he could once again, after 10 months, play some more advanced games like racing and adventure games. All he could play before were some games where he needed only to click on stuff (like, Legend Online).

Besides, the "mousegrid" function of Dragon NaturallySpeaking is quite good! It's similar to the Window's one, but far faster and more efficient on understanding what people say.





About the joystick, I already chose one, it's the Qanba P3GHR, which costs US$ 58:

http://dx.com/p/usb-arcade-joystick-controller-for-pc-ps3-250cm-cable-26910?item=13



I know there are like, thousands of better joysticks, but that's the best one I could find which:

1. The shipping was available to Brazil and didn't costed the price of the joystick itself, like happened on Play-Asia.

2. Cheap and the Joystick is not stiff, is way too sensitive and the buttons are soft and easy to press. I know that's bad for arcade, but that's perfect for him.