Trackball click as a left mouse button
One xinput line remaps the ball's middle-button click to a left click on X11; firmware or libinput hwdb rules do the same job elsewhere.
What it takes
- Config change
Difficulty 1 of 3 — easy.
Details
Daniel_Segel's recipe: find the device with xinput list ('ClockworkPI uConsole Mouse'), then xinput set-button-map "ClockworkPI uConsole Mouse" 1 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12, run at login from a crontab @reboot line or your session startup. It only works under X11; on Wayland (Bookworm 6.12 and later images) it does nothing, and the replies point to systemd hwdb/libinput remapping or a firmware change instead.
Daniel later changed trackball.ino and keymaps.ino for a permanent version and shared the diffs, and Mykhailo_Chuha reports building it once the library versions were sorted.
Links
Open at Forum thread- GitHub — dsegel/uConsole (firmware fork)Repository
Related mods
SuperMarioSF's xinput middle-button emulation turned the ball into a scroll wheel; ClockworkPi then built Fn + ball scrolling into the stock firmware.
Open-source QMK port of the keyboard firmware: Select + ball scrolls, Fn + G game mode, precision mode, tap-hold keys and a web tester, flashed over USB.
Swap the stock ball for a white BlackBerry ball, the ball from a Pimoroni breakout or a fresh EVQWJN007 module — the usual first fix for a jumpy trackball.
beams' guide revives dead trackballs by roughing the ball on 120-grit paper or fitting a 5.5 mm glass ball, with a printed shim to stop the module rattling.
A modified build of ClockworkPi's own Arduino firmware: QMK-like trackball smoothing and Select + ball scrolling without QMK's USB power quirks.
A clean rewrite of the stock keyboard firmware on STM32 HAL: ten switchable layers, a better trackball curve with inertia, Fn lock and auto-dimming backlight.