Question I'm looking for some ideas to replace the touchpad that I (don't) want to use in the phone / handheld that I'm building.

[ziomario]

Hello to everyone.

I'm trying to create a phone or maybe an handheld based on FreeBSD. I'm not sure what will be the final form. I would like it to be something like this,more or less (https://ibb.co/99J6VrWv) :

The approach that I want to take is to use as much USB and HDMI peripherals as I can,so :

a) HDMI screen easily interchangeable.
b) USB keyboard and touchpad
c) portable battery

The hardware component that I don't lilke is the touchpad that you see on the picture above. Because it is too bulky and it takes a lot of space on the layout. I would like to use one smaller,but I didn'd find nothing that has satisfied me for the moment. (Before you ask,I have more competence in software than in hardware : I'm not an engineer. I can't make soldering. I'm looking for plug and play hardware components. At most I can shorten some cable. As I said I would like to replace the Ergonomic Touchpad with a smaller one,like the one you see inside the yellow square on the picture below (https://ibb.co/ccz0hGJL) :

I doubt that there is something like that,intended as standalone USB powered touchpad,ready to be attached and used. But anyway,I would like to gather as much ideas as possible,looking for the one I can work with. I could also rent an engineer and ask to him to adapt some kind of touchpad that's almost ready to go,but not fully,for a reasonable amount of money.

 

[CrashBash]

Interesting! You may be among a minority of us that use *BSD but sounds like a cool project (besides maybe those of us running ZFS pools on file servers). Is the long-term goal a pocket PC or similar?

I'm sure you know, but the keyboard / "touchpad" that's shown looks to be from a BlackBerry phone. I'm not terribly sure if anyone has reverse engineered them but I'm sure you could find parts laying around online easy enough. If you're purely looking for a mouse input device, something like a TrackPoint might be interesting. I know some open source keyboards have used them so there has to be details out there somewhere, and they're really comfy once you get used to 'em.

 

[ziomario]

1) forget the Black Berry Q 20 USB keyboard. I don't want to use a single part of it. Because ? because it is always out of stock. For my pocket FreeBSD phone I want to use only USB components widely available online. You can guess the reason.

2) I've looked the Internet many days looking for a small trackpad or touchpad ready to be used. I found only the Ergonomic one. But I don't like it. It is too bulky. I want a smaller touch or trackpad of the same size of the one used on the BB Q 20 USB keyboard.