this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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ErgoMechKeyboards

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Ergonomic, split and other weird keyboards

Rules

Keep it ergo

Posts must be of/about keyboards that have a clear delineation between the left and right halves of the keyboard, column stagger, or both. This includes one-handed (one half doesn't exist, what clearer delineation is that!?)

i.e. no regular non-split¹ row-stagger and no non-split¹ ortholinear²

¹ split meaning a separation of the halves, whether fixed in place or entirely separate, both are fine.
² ortholinear meaning keys layed out in a grid

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Old version in the back, new version in the front. Fresh off the printing bed. Haven't tested it yet, but pretty happy on first inspection. Have a few sneaky features. Aiming to release it in a month or so to the community. Using it as an excuse to try out Lemmy :-)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

There's options for everything you listed. If you check out Bastard Keyboards, they have designed a pcb that flexes to the curvature of the columns, but as you could imagine, this is custom to the key row and column spacing. Another option is a single key pcb, often called an amoeba. There's a bunch of variants, often with an RGB LED under the key. Even more simple is to just flywire the whole thing. The base requirement for each switch is a single diode, so there's not much under the hood. A good practice that I'd recommend is using a hotswap socket so you can try different switch types or transfer the whole thing to another case...this is essential when developing and iterating a case such as this one. There's a lot of options for flat split boards, and the base is often a PCB with all the traces and pads for the diode, LEDs, MCU etc. These are much easier to build, but obviously don't have the contour foe the hands. I believe, though can't be certain, that the kinesis uses a flexible pcb for each column, similar to the bastard keyboards.