Ploopy Classic 2 open source trackball

Summary

The Classic 2 is a brand new revision of the original Classic, and kits are available today starting at $144CAD! The Classic 2 is just like the original in every way that matters. It’s also a major upgrade for the few things that needed tweaking. USB-C connector That’s right, the Classic 2 has a USB-C connector! The original Classic has a bulky USB-B connector on it (if you don’t know, it’s the connector that you often find in printers). USB-B connectors are very mechanically strong, a quality we prioritised for the purposes of longevity. Since we launched the original Classic, we’ve been shipping many devices with USB-C connectors. We’ve shown to ourselves that these connectors are just as reliable and strong as USB-B connectors. So, yes – the Classic 2 will have a USB-C connector on it, and it’ll be just as mechanically strong as the connector on the original Classic. An improved scroll wheel A common issue with the original Classic was that the scroll wheel would often act oddly if spun too quickly, or would sometimes reverse direction unexpectedly. This issue arose from the way the scroll wheel works. Want the gory technical details? Expand to find out more. The scroll wheel operates using something called a “binary Gray code”. The binary Gray code is simply a way of seeing the direction in which something is moving. If you’ve ever been to a parking garage that has a parking space counter, it’s usually implemented as a binary Gray code. The way it works is that two lasers are positioned at the entrance to the garage. If, for example, a car breaks the first beam and then the second, the garage’s software knows that a car is entering. If the second beam is broken and then the first, a car is leaving. Our scroll wheel is implemented in a very similar way. The scroll wheel design uses a phototransistor to detect the “laser” (which is actually an infrared photodiode, in our case). The microcontroller polls the phototransistor to see if it’s detecting any light. And t...