Integrating mouse into keyboard discussion

[bueller]

I've seen a couple of trackpoints and one guy who put a trackpad in his custom board but I've yet to see anyone do it with a trackball so I'm starting to get the itch! A bit of research has revealed that high dpi sensors can be had for under $30, anyone got any experiences with this sort of stuff?

The controller I've linked can be hooked up to a Teensy relatively easily so it seems like it could be pretty straightforward to put one inside an aluminium case. Securing the ball shouldn't be a problem but if I remember correctly most trackballs have little spring loaded wheels the aid ball movement. Can anyone confirm?

[Findecanor]

I know that whatchamccallum put a Logitech trackball into his Kinesis contoured. The images from the thread are gone, so I'll repost the one I have saved:

That Kinesis model has empty space inside the front, centre, with a separate PCB for each thumb cluster. There are also Kinesis keyboards where the thumb clusters and the controller are on a single PCB in the front, where in  you can not do this mod.

Other people have mod'ed their Kinesis with trackpads in that position. There are Maltron models that come with a trackball in about the same position. Acer Future Keyboard is a split and tented QWERTY board with a trackpad splitting the space bar. There are also a couple models of TRON keyboards (split, tented, column-oriented but not contoured), that have a small pen tablet in front of the thumb keys.

[kurplop]

I put a Slimblade between ErgoDox halves but I didn't mix the electronics. The ball rests on three ruby balls.http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=43709.0

[bueller]

Cheers for the links guys, I'll have a read when I get home! Might send you a PM and pick your brain about the install you did Kurplop, that looks very nicely done