81–90 of 373 posts
I have a kinesis advantage. There are some things I don't like about it, but I doubt it would be practical for me to make my own keyboard with a bowl shape like kinesis or maltron keyboards. And even if I could figure it out, they've probably done research into exactly what kind of curvature works well for the average hand, so whatever I made would be marginally less ergonomic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
$300 for the simplest keyboard...
hipster tax ;) (also, y'know - hand made products)
I don't really understand why people want such tiny keyboards. The most comfortable (and healthy!) way to type is to have your hands a shoulderwidth apart so you don't have to compress your arms. I used an ergodox infinity for a while which was fantastic in terms of back pain but terrible in terms of everything else. I currently use a Kinesis Advantage 1 which I'm tempted to dremel in half so I can get proper separat…
I'm currently held back from going into the mechanical keyboard world because I'm hooked on the thinkpad trackpoint stick and mouse buttons below the spacebar - I've got a thinkpad and two usb keyboards with the dot and mouse buttons, and I use them on every computer I touch. Are there mechanical keyboards with built in mouse functionality?
Ehh I have a kinesis advantage. There are some things I don't like about it, but I doubt it would be practical for me to make my own keyboard with a bowl shape like kinesis or maltron keyboards. And even if I could figure it out, they've probably done research into exactly what kind of curvature works well for the average hand, so whatever I made would be marginally less ergonomic.
Now, if you are not happy with the curvature things get more complicated and I'm not aware of any projects that did a custom housing. That being said I think it is not unrealistic. The biggest problem is to create a curved cover with holes for the key switches. All the switches are mounted on flexible PCBs which should adapt to your new case as long as the curvature is not too crazy. So basically all you need to customize is the top part of the housing, the rest can stay the same.
[1] https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2013-03-21-kinesis_custo...
I’m on the verge of doing this. I have an Ergodox EZ but I want thumb clusters that are more useful, plus I’d like an encoder knob or two. The Kyria is close but it doesn’t do RGB per key or have a thumb cluster that exactly matches what I want. To the drawing board I go!
https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/ may be heading in the direction you want.
I’m on the verge of doing this. I have an Ergodox EZ but I want thumb clusters that are more useful, plus I’d like an encoder knob or two. The Kyria is close but it doesn’t do RGB per key or have a thumb cluster that exactly matches what I want. To the drawing board I go!
TIL people put knobs on their keyboards. Do you generally have to configure your own actions for knob events or is there software that supports them out of the box?
Around 2 years ago now, I took the plunge and bought myself an Ergodox EZ split island keyboard. Quite franky, it is the biggest quantum leap in the ergonomic experience of interacting with a computer I have seen since learning Vim. It is comfortable, effortless and fast. If you spend any significant time interacting with computers it is a complete no brainer to invest in optimising the IO channel between your brain…
I'll be honest, I bought an Ergodox EZ a year or so ago and have consistently struggled to get comfortable using it. I have set up quite a few useful macros for programs I use daily like tmux as well as making it more vim-friendly (after many interations) and yet I still find it a serious chore to get past the fact that the keys feel un-naturally placed. Eventually I just give up and switch back to my laptop keyboard…