101–110 of 136 posts
Nice job! Did you consider 3d printing any components?
If you’re into custom-made keyboards and keyboard parts, check out my Kinesis advantage replacement controller project: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2018-04-17-kinx/ (only 0.2ms of input latency!)
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> I'm curious why you want modular parts rather than just designing a board that has what you want? A design requires an effort (the TFA author worked for 3 months on it) and future changes to it requires extra effort. Plus you need to have the knowledge, the time, and the will to go through all this. Whereas a modular component could be assembled by anybody, tested, changed to a different format if their needs chang…
I agree, but... designing one, two, even more entire keyboards is probably easier than designing a good flexible system of modules. It only becomes a total effort savings if you get lots of buy-in from others. The idea is definitely appealing to the programmer in me, though (make the most generic/flexible/composable design possible). I actually made some single-switch PCBs with some (IMHO) clever design ideas to make…
I think there would be lots of buy in -- lots of devs (kickstarter level of "lots") would want to make a customized keyboard but can't afford the time/bother with going from scratch.
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I haven’t tried both. Nor am I a keyboard hardware enthusiast. I have just spent some time modifying my keyboard through software (Linux X Server). I don’t get the apparent fascination that (mech) keyboard enthusiasts have with small keyboards. I can understand moving or removing the keypad since it displaces the mouse (then again, “don’t use the mouse!”), but beyond that I don’t see the appeal except for the aesthet…
With most mechanical keyboards I’ve encountered the FN key is fully programmable, along with every other key on the keyboard. Typically rather than having the functionality hard coded the FN key will activate a second layer, it’s similar to how shift activated a layer of uppercase characters, but with different functionality. On mine I have a key that flips into a symbols layer, placing characters commonly used in pr…
If time is money I wouldn’t be surprised if I could have saved a lot of money by just buying a mechanical keyboard with good on-board firmware and programming. At least I have a hard time imagining that the programming would be harder than on X.
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I can chime in here. I've been on a quest for the last 18 months for an apple layout mech keyboard. I thought I found one in the z70 pro board, but it's just subtly off. I want 4 keys to the left of space, and 5 to the right. I don't need both up and down arrows, just one there. The first person to build a "row" based multi layout platform will really start to hit the right spot because some people would want a funct…
Hmm, 4 keys left of space and 5 to right is a really specific requirement. My Filco TKL JIS(Japanese Layout) has this and I made it fully reprogrammable using the Pegasus Hoof from here: http://bathroomepiphanies.com/controllers/
It's one of those "I wish someone else solved this so I could spend my money on it vs. my time"
Thanks for the suggestions tho!
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Hmm, 4 keys left of space and 5 to right is a really specific requirement. My Filco TKL JIS(Japanese Layout) has this and I made it fully reprogrammable using the Pegasus Hoof from here: http://bathroomepiphanies.com/controllers/
right, and that keyboard has a weird shift to try and accommodate the arrow. I wish it didn't. If I could pick row by row, I might spend more upfront due to cost of components, but not having to solder, and getting the "perfect" layout, I think it'd take off as long as it was stable. It's one of those "I wish someone else solved this so I could spend my money on it vs. my time" Thanks for the suggestions tho!
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right, and that keyboard has a weird shift to try and accommodate the arrow. I wish it didn't. If I could pick row by row, I might spend more upfront due to cost of components, but not having to solder, and getting the "perfect" layout, I think it'd take off as long as it was stable. It's one of those "I wish someone else solved this so I could spend my money on it vs. my time" Thanks for the suggestions tho!
I think you're talking about the Minila Air, I removed that sugguestion as I noticed that it actually had 6 keys right of space. The keyboard I left has the correct number of keys on each side of the spacebar and arrows are separated: http://www.diatec.co.jp/products/det.php?prod_c=883
It's clearly possible, but nobody does it yet. I considered building my own board, but now I'm leaning modular. Thanks for the suggestion though, it's helpful to illustrate how "close" so many keyboards are and the obsession us KB nerds have.
Has anyone seen keyboards with non-traditional touch surfaces? Such as trackpad keycaps? Backstory: My fingers slide smoothly across my ThinkPad laptop keyboard, so I was playing with optical hand tracking (with a surface mirror to better track touch) to make the entire keyboard (and surrounding laptop) into a multitouch surface. There were occlusion and jitter issues, even with fingernail markers, and I set it aside…
The Waytools text blade sounds somewhat similar to what you're describing: https://waytools.com/
Product-wise, they seem to be in a multi-year struggle to get to production.
Web-dev lesson: A video-based ui, emphasizing closeups, where the video visuals stall, but music continues, with a hidden-by-default slider and no spinner, is an unfortunate combination.