Posts tagged: keeb

move zmk keyboard to new bluetooth adapter

2026-03-23T17:59:59Z

I’ve been having issue with my keyboard disconnecting to my main desktop for awhile. Today I got a cheap bluetooh dongle in and am giving it a run this week to see how things go. The first step was to move it to the new adapter. I’ve never had multiple adapters installed so this was a new to me process.

I was able to do it all with the same keyboard, It did require some juggling between usb and bluetooth modes plugigng and unplugging, two keyboards would be simpler to reason about.

I can’t be bothered to change my brain to think about this machine on a different zmk profile it is of absolute importance for it to remain on the same profile, otherwise this would be a simple bind to another empty profile.

Why not use a cable on desktop?

I dont mind cable, and have used one on this setup for years, but I have actually been picking up and moving this keyboard and using it with different devices.

I’ve got a big battery and performace cranked up, unless my machine is under load I do not notice any key lag.

I did it with bluetoothctl, I’m sure it could have been done with a gui like blueberry or blueman.

bluetoothctl
# list adapters
list
select <old-adapter>
devices
# fin the MAC address of the device 42BLOCK
remove <42BLOCK_MAC>

Now I plugged into usb. And importantly cleared out the zmk profile. If you do not clear the profile your board does not go into pairing mode.

bluetoothctl
# switch adapters
select <new-adapter>
power on
agent on
default-agent
scan on
Put 42Block in pairing mode, then:
pair <42BLOCK_MAC>
trust <42BLOCK_MAC>

At this pint I saw this show up in the logs, I think there was some masking issues or something in zmk, output kept going out usb no matter what so I disconnected the keyboard and typed the passkey in, and it worked.

[agent] Passkey: 540044

Boom, it just started working right away.

bluetoothctl
connect <42BLOCK_MAC>
info <42BLOCK_MAC>
scan off
exit

A Gaming Keyboard

2026-03-05T16:33:27Z

Requirements #

Minecraft
Terraria
SilkSong

3x6 layout #

╭────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────╮
│    │    │    │    │    │    │
├────┼────┼────┼────┼────┼────┤
│    │    │    │    │    │    │
├────┼────┼────┼────┼────┼────┤
│    │    │    │    │    │    │
╰────┴────┴────┴────┼────┼────┼────╮
                    │    │    │    │
                    ╰────┴────┴────╯

Your browser does not support the video tag.

💭 Naya Connect | Hackaday

2026-02-12T21:39:21Z

Naya Connect – Hackaday

Hackaday · hackaday.com

The idea of adjustable key caps to mutate your board into something that really fits you, how you type, how your fingers move, is an absolute banger.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

What is that

2026-01-15T19:22:47Z

I was unironically asked what is that about my keeb today. Followed by no way that works, how would you type a, s, y, u, after showing, I go the “that’s weird” walk away.

new keeb so good

2026-01-03T21:03:13Z

New keeb feeling so good I don’t want to leave it. I’m going to go from having my worse favorite at work, to having my new favorite at work.

💭 My Keyboard Has Sublayers… and It’s Insane - YouTube

2025-05-29T13:04:50Z

linkarzu has a way to navigate his entire mac using a hyper key. Everything looks so tight and polished, also a lot to remember! Lucky he has a system of mnemonics that make it easy to remember. His setup is very Mac focused using mac only apps, so this would not work for me, though I’m sure I could get something similar on linux. He did mention Kanata which is cross platform.

What I do #

I use a far different system that is fast loose and easy. On every system I run I have 9 workspaces that let me put 9 applications, I can easily move apps to different workspaces and have a side by side if I need. The core of what I do is terminal, web browser, and chat. Those go on workspaces 4,5,6, whch are home-row keys. If I’m running obs, that is on 8, steam goes on 1. but I have some freedom to move. Sometimes 2 will be an image editor or a video editor, sometimes something else all together, but I can quickly go to each app.

What I like from Linkazru #

I do like his layered approach. I run a 42 key keyboard so things can get a bit cramped quickly. And when thinking in mnemonics you only get 26 letters in the alphabet, but prefixing these with another layer this number goes up exponentially. Sublayers sound sick to be honest.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

New-caps-for-porta-john

2024-08-05T19:06:00Z

Today I dropped some new caps in the porta-john. I need to do a bunch of posts on zmk and my journey building the porta-john, I’ve been rocking it for at least two weeks now pretty solid and I am absolutely loving it. More on that later.

KLP-Lame-Keycaps #

The model of the caps are KLP-Lame by braindefender , they are super rounded and smooth. They look really good on camera and feel good to the finders.

I printed these at home on my ender3 s1 pro with a black and purple silk filliment. I printed all 42 at once using a Printing 42 keys at once technique. They do have just a bit of a rough texture that you can feel on your figertips. I printed these on super quality .12mm layer height, while my last set was printed on draft quality .32mm layer height. They look crazy different in print quality with the lines of the new caps barely showing, the feel isn’t nearly as drastic.

The Result #

Check out the final shots as I set up the porta-john with these sweet caps.

And here they are all set up.

Full Disclosure #

I am building out a keyboard business, so if you are interested in getting some of these caps for yourself or an entire board custom made to your liking hit me up. If you’re not quite ready, I would be stoked if you keep in touch by sigining up for the email newsletter https://ticklemykeys.com.

Printing 42 keys at once

2024-08-03T09:54:00Z

I’m working on creating some gcode to create a whole set of key caps in one print, it is getting tedious to print them one at a time, and my past experience with my printer proves that printing a bunch of separate pieces increases the chances of failure. I don’t want to end up with 42 keys that are half done and a ball of filament.

figuring out the coordinates #

To figure out the coordinates I printed one key cap, and manually jogged the printer in position to knock off the cap, then sweep it out of the way.

print head in position to knock

Position before the knock

Position after the sweep

gcode #

I opened the gcode split it into start.gcode, end.gcode, and part.gcode.

start.gcode #

;FLAVOR:Marlin
;TIME:1488
;Filament used: 0.265511m
;Layer height: 0.12
;MINX:105.708
;MINY:101.231
;MINZ:0.12
;MAXX:113.512
;MAXY:118.776
;MAXZ:17.04
;TARGET_MACHINE.NAME:Creality Ender-3 S1 Pro
;Generated with Cura_SteamEngine 5.8.0
M82 ;absolute extrusion mode
; Ender 3 S1 Pro Start G-code
; M413 S0 ; Disable power loss recovery
G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder

; Prep surfaces before auto home for better accuracy
M140 S60
M104 S200

G28 ; Home all axes
G1 Z10.0 F3000 ; Move Z Axis up little to prevent scratching of Heat Bed
G1 X0 Y0

M190 S60
M109 S200

M82 ;absolute extrusion mode
; Ender 3 S1 Pro Start G-code
; M413 S0 ; Disable power loss recovery
G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder

; Prep surfaces before auto home for better accuracy
M140 S60
M104 S200

G28 ; Home all axes
G1 Z10.0 F3000 ; Move Z Axis up little to prevent scratching of Heat Bed
G1 X0 Y0

M190 S60
M109 S200

G1 X0.1 Y20 Z0.3 F5000.0 ; Move to start position
G1 X0.1 Y200.0 Z0.3 F1500.0 E15 ; Draw the first line
G1 X0.4 Y200.0 Z0.3 F5000.0 ; Move to side a little
G1 X0.4 Y20 Z0.3 F1500.0 E30 ; Draw the second line

end.gcode #

M140 S0 ; Turn off bed
M107 ; Turn off fan
G91 ;Relative positioning
G1 E-2 F2700 ;Retract a bit
G1 E-2 Z0.2 F2400 ;Retract and raise Z
G1 X5 Y5 F3000 ;Wipe out
G1 Z10 ;Raise Z more
G90 ;Absolute positioning

G1 X0 Y220 ;Present print
M106 S0 ;Turn-off fan
M104 S0 ;Turn-off hotend
M140 S0 ;Turn-off bed

M84 X Y E ;Disable all steppers but Z

M82 ;absolute extrusion mode
M104 S0
;End of Gcode
;SETTING_3 {"global_quality": "[general]\\nversion = 4\\nname = Super Quality #2
;SETTING_3 \\ndefinition = creality_ender3s1pro\\n\\n[metadata]\\ntype = quality
;SETTING_3 _changes\\nquality_type = super\\nsetting_version = 23\\n\\n[values]\
;SETTING_3 \nadhesion_type = none\\nsupport_type = buildplate\\n\\n", "extruder_
;SETTING_3 quality": ["[general]\\nversion = 4\\nname = Super Quality #2\\ndefin
;SETTING_3 ition = creality_ender3s1pro\\n\\n[metadata]\\ntype = quality_changes
;SETTING_3 \\nquality_type = super\\nsetting_version = 23\\nposition = 0\\n\\n[v
;SETTING_3 alues]\\nbrim_gap = 0.1\\nspeed_print = 120\\nsupport_angle = 35\\nz_
;SETTING_3 seam_corner = z_seam_corner_inner\\nz_seam_position = right\\n\\n"]}

part.gcode #

Now part.gcode is the rest of the gcode, and is 22k lines long, I’ll spare putting that in this post.

Writing the knock and sweep #

Now that I have the coordinates, and my gcode split up, I am going to write the code for the knock and sweep by hand, and just add this to the end of part.gcode.

; KNOCK AND SWEEP
G0 X80 Y140 ; move to knock position
G0 Z2 ; lower z to knock
G0 X140 ; knock
G0 Y40 ; sweep

A python script to make multiples #

Now I wrote this python script to generate a gcode file to print n number of caps

from pathlib import Path
import sys

n = int(sys.argv[1])
print("printing " + str(n) + " times")


start = Path("start.gcode").read_text()
end = Path("end.gcode").read_text()
part = Path("part.gcode").read_text()

full = start + part * n + end
Path("kp-lame-normal-" + str(n) + ".gcode").write_text(full)

python render.py 42

Results #

The final result here is me printing out 42 new caps in this beautiful black and purple silk fillament.

knock-and-sweep.mp4

💭 Alternatives · joric/nrfmicro Wiki

2024-07-01T14:48:16Z

Alternatives

A Pro Micro alternative for wireless keyboards. Contribute to joric/nrfmicro development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub · github.com

Huge list of micro controllers tried and used in keeb builds.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

💭 Found: OverlayKey X – Thomas Baart's Microblog

2024-06-28T18:35:52Z

Found: OverlayKey X

Thomas Baart's Microblog · micro.thomasbaart.nl

This is almost exactly what I have been thinking about building for quite awhile. I am going to give it a good try with a few $$ in filiment some cheap switches a microcontroller and go pretty bare bones, maybe open wiring on the bottom.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

💭 qmk_firmware/docs/features/programmable_button.md at master · ...

2024-06-26T01:19:41Z

Interesting, linux supports 32 programmable buttons, special buttons that do nothing that hotkey programs like xbindkeys can pick up and run things, seems like it would be very intersting to use on a macro pad. You could easily do dynamic and complex tasks without clashing that keybinding with something else.

I’m going to look into this for my next obs setup. No matter what I try to do with the hyper key it always tends to do odd things depending on the application I am in. typically its tmux, and it starts trying to do something I don’t want it to.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

💭 Steam Deck dock

2024-06-06T17:25:14Z

This is a sick steam deck dock! With a corne built in laptop style.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

My experience with a new 3dkeeb corne

2021-06-21T14:27:19Z

specs #

first days typing #

first days working #

What did I sign myself up for? If the lower typing speed with alpha characters was not enough throw in special characters and keybings I setup long ago and only remember by muscle memory. I have so far killed my tmux pane instead of zooming in (m-x instead of m-z), killed my zsh line instead of paste to the end of a command (c-c instead of c-v).

VIA #

LT(1, KC_ENT)
LT(1, KC_TAB)
LT(1, KC_SHIFT)

MT(MOD_RSHFT, KC_ESC)
MT(MOD_HYPR, KC_GESC)

setting up qmk cli #

conda create -n qmk python=3.8 -y

qmk config compile.keyboard=crkbd/rev1 compile.keymap=default
qmk config user.keyboard=crkbd/rev1 user.keymap=default

# This will clone into ~/qmk_firmware
# you can change this behavior by setting QMK_HOME
# export QMK_HOME=~/custo_qmk_home_dir
qmk setup

# qmk setup took 10 minutes on my machine with wsl over a mobile network

qmk setup
ImportError: Unable to load any of the following libraries:libhidapi-hidraw.so libhidapi-hidraw.so.0 libhidapi-libusb.so libhidapi-libusb.so.0 libhidapi-iohidmanager.so libhidapi-iohidmanager.so.0 libhidapi.dylib hidapi.dll libhidapi-0.dll

pip install hidapi
sudo apt-get install python-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev libudev-dev
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev libudev-dev
qmk setup
# https://pypi.org/project/hid/
apt install libhidapi-hidraw0
qmk setup
sudo apt-get install avrdude

inspiration #

https://github.com/markstos/qmk_firmware/tree/markstos/keyboards/crkbd/keymaps/markstos