Ploopy Bean is a pointing stick mouse with 4 buttons and open source QMK firmware

There’s no shortage of computer mice available: they come in a wide range of shapes, sizes, and prices. But if you want a different sort of computer input device, then your choices are more limited. There are only a handful of high-quality trackball mice or external trackpads available.

A Canadian company with a silly name has helped fill in that gap by producing trackballs, touchpads, knobs, and other devices. And now Ploopy has introduced an even more niche product, but one that I could see appealing to fans of classic Lenovo ThinkPads very much. Meet the Ploopy Bean – the company’s first pointing stick. It’s basically a USB version of Lenovo TrackPoint with some extra features thrown in for good measure.

Available now for $70 CAD (about $52), the Bean is an 84 x 64 x 16mm (3.3″ x 2.5″ x 0.6″) box with a 3D printed case, a USB Type-C port, four customizable buttons, and a red pointing stick near the middle.

If you’ve never used a pointing stick before, it’s basically a little nub that you nudge with a finger to move a mouse cursor across your screen. Often placed in the center of a keyboard rather than below it (like a touchpad) or off to the side (like a mouse), these pointing sticks are designed to let you make big or small movements across your screen with just a tiny movement of your fingertip.

Ploopy’s version features a Texas instruments TMAG5273 high-precision magnetic sensor inside that takes 20,000 samples per second and can detect movement changes as small as 3 microns (1/10,000th of an inch).

The nub also moves more than the ones typically found in laptops, with support for movements up to 11mm in each axis. That’s a small enough range of motion to let you manipulate the pointing stick without moving your hand very much, but Ploopy says the extra movement will help reduce fatigue that’s sometimes associated with pushing other pointing sticks.

By default the four Omron D2LS-21 buttons are configured for left click, right click, middle click, and click-to drag or scroll. But since the Bean has a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microncontroller and runs a version of QMK open source firmware, you can also use the free and open source VIA web app to change configuration settings. You can also install your own firmware on all Ploopy devices.

And like all Ploopy devices, hardware and software design files are also available at GitHub. So theoretically you could build your own Ploopy Bean or customize the designs. It’s probably going to be cheaper and easier for most users to just purchase one, but it’s nice to know that if you have to repair one in the future and Ploopy doesn’t have replacement parts in stock, you may be able to 3D print your own.

Ploopy says Early Access orders for the Bean will begin shipping as soon as today… but the company has already sold out of Early Access units. So customers who didn’t get their orders in early enough will either have to wait 8 weeks for them to ship (if you get in on Tier A) or 20 weeks (Tier B).