Posts tagged: keyboard

This commit to my keymap gets rid of vertical combos, those were a bad idea to me. Maybe I didnt give it a shot, but hitting two keys at once on purpose with the same finger is a skill, one that I don’t have. This change maps those symbols so that they work as a combo or layer switch, so getting the layer key in first does it by layer, but pressing them at the same time gives me the combo, kinda feels genius. We will see how it goes.

looking into trying these Mill-Max pins on a handwired 3d printed build to see if I can get away from specialty hot swap sockets. Damn they aren’t exactly cheap, I really want the nice short ones but they start at $20 per 60ct and you need two per key, that adds up quick.

This is such a cool idea, I tend to not use laptops at all because they are so uncomfortable I just wait till I’m back at my desk. This solves two main issues I have with laptops, the posture to use them is shit, the keyboards that come on them is not what I want to use. I’ve solved the latter with my own custom keyboard.

Nice overview to getting started in zmk

Prime mentioned on stream that Whites were his favorite switch. I tend to like lighter switches and want to give it a try. I really like my Durock lupine’s at 55g, the box whites are 45g, that feels like it would take quite a bit more control, floating over the keys.

The SuperMini nrf52840 is a sick controller for building keyboards, affordable, easy to get, and compact. Bluetooth and wired setup just works in zmk. This page has a nice image of the pinout.

Loving this 6 pink with blueforward multicolor combo the porta john has going right now. Also my son printed me a cute black pumpkin.

ploopy just dropped a trackpad that runs qmk. This sounds so cool. I’m excited to see some videos on it. It would be sick to get this incorporated into a porta john running zmk, one bluetooth device to run all the peripherals.

porta-john design update, working on moving the seams to line up with an edge to eliminate long noticable seams. These seams are required because I don’t have a printer big enough to print this in one shot.

hotswaps are going in. I’m getting really excited for hotswaps as they will make keebs more repairable, and users can self change out the switches if they want. I can also pre-build them ready to go, and drop in switches at the time of order. I did learn today that these are hyper specific to gateron, damn all these switch manufacturers and their special pinouts.

Last thing I gotta make more room for wiring the microcontroller and running wires out to the rows and columns, my first prototype build took waay to long to build.

This low profile design almost made it to 9. I think blending together the custom brim to make them all one piece really made the final difference here. The custom brim is two layers thick, only touching on the top layer making it very easy to peel off, but gives better adhesion to the bed, and does not loose one like this print did.

really excited for how these caps of my own design are working out. Having the extra control is the first time I’ve been able to print more than one at a time without some hacky gcode. I’ve got a set of nine here that I have printed 4 times without a single failure.

MX keycap stem dimensions. I used these to create my new caps and all these dimensions worked great. The one dimension I had issues with was the outer diameter off the cap stem, not shown here. 5.3mm ended up being a good outer diameter for me. I print them at an angle and the bottom of the stem can get a bit of sag, pressing out on the outer wall of the switch and can actually stick the key.

This is a very well thought out zmk config featuring many macros, numword, and timeless homerow mods. The build system to build locally looks on point, I really need to give that a try!

The Heawood42 is an interesting diodeless keyboard that is not direct wired. According to the repo this is the only keyboard to be diodeless and not direct wired. It does this through the use of a graph.

This is a wild key cap that uses a lever to convert horizontal key presses to vertically press the switch down. The leveret v2 uses two of these on thumbs, one to press outward, and what appears to be one straight forward which feels like it would have to be a wrist motion, but who am I to judge without having it in person.

This is the coolest scrappy build, no printer or modeling required, no fancy tools, just straight chisel and claw hammer in soft pine. Im here for it, create the thing that you want to create.

This is a pretty sick design, touch screen macropad, trackball, ring, and knobs for days. I just want to play with it and see what I can make it do.

As I’m typing I think I just realized that its modular, each rectangle is it’s own section!

Even after switching to my hm and ht behaviors I am running into some issues where sometimes I am still accidentally hitting mods(&hm) and layers(&ht) while typing and it’s been getting frustrating. My main issue has been on &ht, they are configured the same so I suspect that my pinkies just move a bit slower over the keys than my pointer/middle finger.

I just added quick-tap-ms and require-prior-idle-ms to my &hm and &ht behaviors, and a few intentionally sloppy passes through monkeytype seem to show that its working well. A few days of trying this will tell whether it was a good fix or if I have maybe gone too far the other way.

The end goal here is to be able to roll over keys faster without worrying about hitting other layers or mods.

I’ve been working on something, I’m gong to combine my mechanical engineering skills with my love of great keyboards and start a custom keyboard shop for building custom keyboards for exactly what people need with an emphasis on portability.