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Ploopy Mouse

P

pzogel

Reviewer
Joined
Aug 20, 2019
Messages
507 (0.24/day)
With the Ploopy Mouse, we have something special for review. Running on an open-source QMK firmware, the Ploopy Mouse allows for a high degree of customization, and despite not being a gaming mouse in the strict sense, the Ploopy Mouse nonetheless has a PixArt PMW3360 and plenty of buttons.

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To ploop or not to ploop...

That price though for a 3d printed ploopy....
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I'll be perfectly honest. When I saw this, my initial thought was "this can't be real" because, well, the name of this thing isn't exactly inspiring - instead, it sounds like it came from the mind of a 5 year old, lol. It's really easy to miss the 'L' and mistake it for the "Poopy Mouse" :laugh: In addition to the name, the fact that this is entirely 3D-printed just....well, I feel like I can't take this thing seriously.

As always, I appreciate your in-depth rodent reviews @pzogel! Any plans on doing a review of the Basilisk V3?
 
3D printing does still have some issues, namely speed and reliability, that could affect cost.

In 2018, I briefly worked for a company that manufactured their products using 3D printers, and even with the extremely optimized g-code they used, the prints still took 30-45 minutes per product. If I remember, their facility had around eight printing cabinets, each of which contained three printers. And none of this includes failed prints, of which there were many. Failed prints could be caused by anything from the extruder becoming clogged (which we fixed by removing the extruder, hitting it with a blowtorch, and jamming a metal rod into it), to a technician messing up a base value in the printer software causing it to home incorrectly, to even something as simple as running out of filament mid-print (sometimes caused by the extruder slipping while trying to pull the filament through due to a poorly wound spool). Add onto this the labor required afterward to clean up and assemble the products, and they had relatively high prices.

What I'd like to see is a DIY kit where they sell the bare PCB and some STLs so I can print the other parts myself.
 
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This is very cool. If they could resolve the middle click issue I may even be a buyer. Thanks very much for the quality review!
 
3D printing is suitable for small series production or single unit production. For mass production only injection molding is usable. 3D printing is also good for some unique shapes, because some of them are difficult to manufacture using injection molding. FDM is the cheapest way to do 3D printing, but quality is the worst.

Use FDM 3D printing to manufacture mouse cases is just dumb...
 
same team that also remade the Microsoft Trackball Explorer as a 3d printed ploopy mouse, which is cool.
(now if I can just get my Logitech Trackman fx as welll....)

but yeah, its cool imo, just sad that its expensive because you would think it...specifically would not be.
 
Why is there a... "headphone jack" (?) next to the USB port in front. Is that used for debugging or something?
 
LTUGamer said:
3D printing to manufacture mouse cases is just dumb...
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It's too slow and then assembled by hand takes valuable time which cost the customer...
Which shows it in the price unfortunately...
 
That screw on the top will collect a lot of gunk.
 
@pzogel in the article the way the scroll wheel encoder is written of is a bit incoherent.

a) this mouse does have an encoder, while in the text you write that it does not have an encoder with steps. An encoder always has steps, as that is how they work. They may not have mechanical feedback, but that is a completely separate thing.
b) to my understanding, most mice have optical ones due to superior durability (edit: no they do not, mechanical are lighter, cheaper and more popular). Mechanical encoders are prone to wearing out very quickly. Other durable variants are magnetic encoders and capacitive ones, but i think that they cost more.
c) the encoder and having a mechanical contraption to produce mechanical feedback are usually more or less separate components, and you should not mix the two when trying to describe how the scroll wheel works.

Besides that detail, the article was very well written and interesting! Do you have plans of reviewing other ploopy products?


Edit: to my surprise kaihl encoders are mechanical. I might be wrong in how common mechanical and optical encoders are. Kaihl ones are rated only for a couple million scrolls :F
Logitech has optical encoders in some of their mice.

edited the post to fix the wrong info. Sry about that.
 
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pzogel said:
What I meant was that the encoder lacks individual steps, not that it doesn't have one in the first place. I've edited the review to clarify that part. Thank you!
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But it does have steps! It simply lacks a haptic feedback mechanism for when the steps are counted up or down.

a ”stepless” scroll wheel would mean some kind of a analog device that would output free angles like a thumbstick. An encoder, by definition, splits rotations to a fixed number of steps or increments, whether it has haptic feedback or not. This one, based on the images in the review, has something like 12 steps or increments per a full rotation.

In the article I’d just state that it’s a free rotating feedbackless scroll wheel, as steps as a term, when it comes to encoders, is a bit misleading if used to describe whether it has haptic feedback or not.

edit: and to clarify, ”a step” in the context of rotary encoders typically means the angle between two states in the encoding wheel.
 
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pzogel said:
I'm catching your drift now. I've edited the review accordingly, should no longer be ambiguous.
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Looks great now! Hopefully my comments didn’t read as aggressive or forceful, as that was not my intent. English isn’t my first language and I sometimes have problems with that.

Love the mouse reviews, keep it up!
 
Dredi said:
Looks great now! Hopefully my comments didn’t read as aggressive or forceful, as that was not my intent. English isn’t my first language and I sometimes have problems with that.

Love the mouse reviews, keep it up!
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No worries, I appreciate the comments :). And thank you.
 
P4-630 said:
It's too slow and then assembled by hand takes valuable time which cost the customer...
Which shows it in the price unfortunately...
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Yeah and I have yet to discover the first advantage of that in this review to be honest.

We're looking at something that could be DIY'ed with a blueprint. The parts aren't special, those sensors are everywhere these days, and the implementation is, thus far, lacking.

Its basically premium upon premium upon premium for something as simple as a scroll wheel a sensor and a couple of buttons that already existed since the year computer.
The shape isn't especially useful in any way; its a dust magnet by design because its not smooth, etc.

ryun said:
Why is there a... "headphone jack" (?) next to the USB port in front. Is that used for debugging or something?
Click to expand...

Just to stick it to Apple. :laugh:
 
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