When I tell people that I love my Ploopy Knob, and I can’t stop touching it while I work, they sometimes get the wrong idea. To be fair, when I first heard of it (a science fiction writer was joking about it), I wasn’t even sure the Ploopy Knob was a real device, or if it was an April Fool’s joke. But after I had finished laughing, I looked at the device’s website (
https://ploopy.co/knob/), laughed some more (“with a smooth feel and great finish, it’s a Knob you’ll want to touch all day long”), and realised I might actually find it very useful to have a Ploopy Knob. And if it turned out to be a dud, it would be worth the money just for the jokes.
So what is it? Simply a knob that you can turn, an accessory for your Windows or Linux computer (it works less well on Mac), about 5 cm in diameter – which is much smaller than I expected, but turns out to be perfect. Built around a tiny Raspberry Pi, many of its other parts are 3D-printed, and the plans are available for users to print replacements if necessary. It’s not wireless: it needs to be plugged into the computer via USB. You don’t grasp the sides of it, usually, the surface is ridged, so that a finger resting on the top of the Ploopy Knob can easily turn it, without losing grip.
Power users can apparently reprogram the device to do different tasks, but that’s not me, I just use it for scrolling through documents while I read them, and yet I am utterly delighted with it. I’ve bought many similar devices over the years – a number pad to which I could assign macros, a rollerball, a mouse pen, and at one point I even had an Xbox controller hooked up to the PC for scrolling around documents – but none of them were ever so much better than the mouse and keyboard that they earned a permanent spot on my desk.
The Ploopy Knob is different. For one thing it's hilarious. Every time I mention it I laugh. This is not something to be underestimated when working. A chuckle a day adds up to a lot of chuckles over a lifetime. But it also fits onto the desk very neatly: I'm right-handed, so my keyboard (a clicky Das Keyboard) is in the middle, the mouse on the right, and the Ploopy Knob sits on the left, taking up very little space and always ready to use. It feels very nicely balanced. There are keyboards that have similar knobs, but that means hovering over the keyboard, whereas the Ploopy Knob can be placed in more pleasurable locations, so reading becomes much more pleasant.
It is also much more precise and sensitive than using a mouse wheel for the same job. So even if all I ever use it for is scrolling through Word files I’m editing and PDFs I’m checking, it was well worth the money I paid (about fifty quid). The only problem is that it's made me so keen to keep reading on the PC that I've tired my eyes out a bit. If I had a job interview now, I would be obliged to ask whether I would be allowed to use my Ploopy Knob in the workplace. Now I'm accustomed to having a Ploopy Knob, working without one would feel like a needless frustration. Stephen Theaker *****
