First up: Let's recap the status of everything
Gergo: Kits are shipped, Partials/Readys are being assembled and shipped
Georgi: FW Working, beta units released, waiting on that to finish but results are good!
ErgoTaco: Hardware working, FW issues but boards are built.
Butter Stick: Waiting on boards to come in.
So this is a post I was hoping to not have to write, but supply issues are what they are.
So the Pearl was released 12 years ago, a time where phone UIs were grid like and web browsing was mostly moving between fields and light scrolling. As such when they reached for a navigation device, they settled on the Panasonic part I've been using. When you try using it as a general purpose mouse, it's horrible. The sensor resolution simply isn't there. It's a great idea but the execution falls flat. Initially I hoped this could be worked around in software but it's obvious this is a hardware problem. Also this is a obsolete part and supply is drying up. My current source just stopped being able to acquire them for me and I only have a handful left. This is what happens when you design on obsolete parts.
Now lets talk about the backlog, I can get a board put together and tested in about 20 minutes, that's actually not too bad! The trackballs take about a hour each. That's pretty fucking bad. Oh and there's a 20% of chance of having the ball get gummed up and throwing the whole thing out. I work two jobs and have this keyboard grind going on, these trackballs are holding me back hard.
So it's being killed off, a little due to supply, a little due to assembly pains and a lot to do with it sucking.
That being said, I've started work on a Joystick module and a TrackPad module these should hopefully be ready in a month or two, watch the blog for updates. In addition, I'm publishing footprints for the interface for both the switch I2C connects and the gBallin. The hope here being if someone wants to design a small board, they can! There will be a post on this in a few minutes.
What about existing orders? Glad you asked. With any order that came bundled with a gBallin a discount code for a free module with shipping will be provided. The hope here being you want something that works well as opposed to a hunk of shit (and you can always whack a MX switch in there in the meantime).
Thanks for tuning in!
