My current keyboard is 34 keys split, but I still need to move my right hand away from keyboard to mouse from time to time. I am aware about options that are possible (cirque trackpad, various trackballs and etc.), but I wanted to investigate what can be done with joystick (as it is quite cheap option).
So I have tried to play around with joystick’s algorithms a little bit and made QMK PR in the end.
Unfortunately it’s not too well organised, but it just does an analogReadPin to get an X/Y value, scales it to the desired mouse values, and sends it using a pointing_device_task.
I am a big fan of joystick pointing devices, would love to see what you end up making!
I’m not sure what sort of joystick you’re using, but you can get a simple analog one working without much work.
I use some hall effect ones in this keyboard:
https://github.com/sffubs/dactyl_manuform_gimbal
They are analog joysticks, so generate a voltage that indicates the position. The joystick code is in here:
https://github.com/sffubs/qmk_firmware/blob/master/keyboards/handwired/dactyl_manuform_gimbal/dactyl_manuform_gimbal.c
Unfortunately it’s not too well organised, but it just does an analogReadPin to get an X/Y value, scales it to the desired mouse values, and sends it using a pointing_device_task.
I am a big fan of joystick pointing devices, would love to see what you end up making!