Looks very inspired by the Teenage Engineering OP-1. Hopefully it’s as fun.
I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
181–190 of 688 posts
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#182Nice design (although personally I need a numpad). But why does it require Windows 10??
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#183Web site advice: The spinning graphic is cool but it's very hard to get a decent look at the whole thing. I even tried clicking to pause it. It seems like all the pictures are partial or moving. As the keyboard goes: As others have noted, it would be really nice to see this design approach taken to a more full-sized standard keyboard. I think it's necessary to have some kind of tactile thing between function keys - a…
[deleted]
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#184Love the design in general, nice and understated. I'm not sold on the typograhy for the numbers, it seems a bit overdone. The rotary encoder seems a bit pointless, I wouldn't know what to use it for other then volume perhaps? Could the aluminium base be replaced with more of the recycled plastics? If you are going for sustainable, that seems more sustainable then milling one of the more energy intensive materials we…
Encoders are pretty nice for volume and screen brightness, and if you are working with some specific software you could in theory remap them to other random stuff like scroll through a video editor timeline. My usecase is limited to volume/screen brightness.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#185Everyone is different, but personally I won’t buy a keyboard without separate Delete and Backspace keys, without Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Insert keys, and without a dedicated Menu key [0], for any kind of serious work. I’d also imagine that one is prone to bump into the rotary knob if one is not fully conditioned to that keyboard. I applaud the T-shaped cursor block and the full-sized function keys, although it would be us…
I very much enjoyed the [Vortex Race 3] which is 75% with all the F-keys and the home/delete/pg key cluster in a line down the right. It works really well and lets you switch between Mac/Windows button order for the CMD/Windows/ctrl buttons in the bottom left through a keyboard shortcut if I remember correctly. It comes with both colourful _and_ grey keys for the clusters! A really handsome and well thought-out keybo…
I have been using this keyboard since 2018. I have giant hands and somehow it works really well. I barely have to move my hands at all.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#186a) Wow, this looks amazing, despite me having no need for wireless or interest in a small keyboard.
b) Wait, there are low profile mechanical switches? I always thought mechanical keyboards were impossible for me as I far prefer flat keys than the giant keys with gaping valleys between them. But apparently that’s not necessarily the case? Now I want to try one out.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#187I'll state my requirements - for anyone interested in meeting them: I have an OLKB preonic. And I used QMK to significantly modify my layout. I started out with the modified Colemak - but the re-arranged the keys to move keys which require the index finger to move to the side - on the QWERTY that would for example be G and H . I moved B and K forexample where Z and X are on the Qwerty - and moved Z and X to the numbe…
What typing speed do you get with this approach?
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#188No Linux Support? The dial functionality can be achieved easily with layers I would expect it to be more ergo in the keys layout
It's running open source ZMK firmware, which has no problems connecting to Linux devices, and if I remember correctly the "base keymap" features will all work cross-OS, and can be remapped easily with a firmware update.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#189Everyone is different, but personally I won’t buy a keyboard without separate Delete and Backspace keys, without Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Insert keys, and without a dedicated Menu key [0], for any kind of serious work. I’d also imagine that one is prone to bump into the rotary knob if one is not fully conditioned to that keyboard. I applaud the T-shaped cursor block and the full-sized function keys, although it would be us…
This.
The traditional keyboard standard may not be perfect but it used to be standard. I had muscle memory that served me. Now my client laptop, employer laptop, personal laptop, home gaming/photo desktop, media computer, etc all want to have wildly different, completely unique layouts, usually with massive compromises. "you just have to get used to it" assumes I'll have a single keyboard for prolonged period of time but that is simply not the case for me. I need the dedicated home/insert/pgup/pgdwn block because I use it every minute. I need function keys in easy blocks of four so I don't hunt for f5 or f9. Layout should be a solved problem, or let's work on making a better layout standard, but each keyboard having its own layout is a personal nightmare.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#190i can say only one thing:
CTRL should be in the corner.