The jobs we function on Hackaday are developed to all standards, as well as we’d have to admit that things have left our own benches as bundles of cable as well as tape. in some cases we see jobs developed to such a high common that we’re shocked that they aren’t a high-end produced product, such as [jfedor2]’s two-ball trackball project. It combines a pair of billiard spheres as well as a couple of buttons with a beautifully-designed 3D-printed situation that looks for all the world as though it came from a premium peripheral brand.
Inside are a pair of PMW3360 optical sensors on PCBs mounted with a view into the billiard sphere sockets, as well as for which the brains come courtesy of an RP2040 microcontroller. There are five PCBs in all, each having a set of purpose-built stand-offs to hold it. The result appears to be about as great a trackball as you’d hope to buy, except of program that you can’t. All the data to make your own are in the GitHub repository though, so all is not lost.
Over the years we’ve brought you a range of trackball designs, including at least one other develop utilizing a billiard ball.