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I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

electronicmaterialsoffice.com

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Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#291

Post by ticklemyelmo »

seltzered_ wrote: post #94

I run a subreddit on mobile ergonomics ( http://reddit.com/r/ergomobilecomputers/ ) and spent the past year using raised tablet PC as my only machine, and curating the smaller subset of portable keyboard & computer setups. My advice: - drop the rotary encoder, it messes up the height for packing the keyboard away. - a 75% layout (i.e. having fn keys) is okay, but makes it a bit challenging to fit in with a 13" tablet…

A roller-style rotary encoder would work better. And perhaps be a better ergnonomic fit for what I assume is its primary use case, scrolling.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#292

Post by minimaul »

seanbarry wrote: post #229

There's a lot of criticism in the comments here, some of it feels very negative. I can imagine reading it as the OP is quite demoralising. Personally I think what the OP has achieved is very impressive. The design looks beautiful, and there's a very "Apple-esque" feel to the website. I love that sustainability has been made a requirement as part of the design. I think some of the other comments give good feedback abo…

Barring a few issues, I could honestly see myself buying it - it's a nice design statement, it looks reasonably practical to use, and assuming the build quality lives up to the design it should be a really nice keyboard.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#293

Post by whiskey14 »

jordemort wrote: post #272

The biggest disadvantage to switching to a split keyboard is seeing neat things like this come out, and then hearing my wrists say "it's too bad we're never letting you go back." I even have to travel with the damn thing now, if I'm planning on doing any serious coding...

I feel your pain. I would pay a lot of money for a portable low profile split kb with good trackball. Maintaining my own is fun but a bit onerous

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#295

Post by warp »

ebastler wrote: post #172
D13Fd wrote: post #105

Thoughts: - Excellent job - The font choices are bold. They don’t appeal to me personally, but nice job. - The sunk/raised key caps look nice but I’m not sure how they would perform in practice. - I couldn’t tell from the website what the second switch on the site does. Maybe USB/Bluetooth? - My strong preference is a key command for switching from Bluetooth/USB, and that the keyboard keep both active for instant swi…

PCB designer of the board here - The second switch can toggle USB/Bluetooth profile 1/Bluetooth profile 2 (3 pos slider), but the board runs the open source ZMK firmware and you can reconfigure it however you want. Auto-switching between BT and USB is not used on the current firmware (as it would make the USB slider pos quite useless), but the firmware can absolutely do it. EDIT: You could for example reconfigure the…

Congrats on the design, using ZMK seems like a solid choice.

Did you consider adding a small screen?

I've always hated bluetooth keyboards until I built a Zaphod (which also runs ZMK). And just being able to see battery estimate, whether it is trying to pair, or which device it is currently connected to has made it a much smoother experience.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#296

Post by toqy »

m3kw9 wrote: post #278

The best thing you can do is to get ppl to review it because many won’t buy it without actually feeling it out once, but a good reviewer can give you a pretty good idea

I think it's fairly normal in the mech keyboard community to buy relatively expensive equipment without every having touched it and waiting a long while for it to arrive

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#297

Post by thegeomaster »

nxdmum wrote: post #222
thegeomaster wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What typing speed do you get with this approach?

I was consistently hitting 40-50 on MonkeyType - but while transporting the keyboard - i damaged it a bit. so now out of touch. I was practising about 20 mins every day for about 50 days - with misses on days when i had a lot of work. But i know that my speed would increase. Now when i see words - i can see the trigrams and I can visually break them down. I am confident i would be able to reach 70 if i practice more.…

Interesting. To me, even 70 sounds quite low compared to the effort involved, and probably more mentally taxing. Out of curiosity, what is your motivation behind the experiment?

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#298

Post by rewgs »

AbraKdabra wrote: post #283

Keyboard looks great but no insert-delete-home-end cluster means an instant no from me in any keyboard, how do you people move without those keys? I've cringed enough in my life seeing people pressing the arrow keys and waiting 5-20 seconds while the cursor traverse an entire phrase/paragraph.

Mac users don’t need them. Not sure about Insert, but Cmd+backspace, Cmd+up or left arrow, Cmd+down or right arrow give you delete/home/end respectively. Alt+up/down arrow gives you page up/down.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#299

Post by potamic »

seanbarry wrote: post #229

There's a lot of criticism in the comments here, some of it feels very negative. I can imagine reading it as the OP is quite demoralising. Personally I think what the OP has achieved is very impressive. The design looks beautiful, and there's a very "Apple-esque" feel to the website. I love that sustainability has been made a requirement as part of the design. I think some of the other comments give good feedback abo…

This is becoming a trend on HN where top comment points calls out the criticism in a thread. I personally feel there is nothing negative about critique and one of the reasons people broadcast their work here is to receive more feedback on it. Not every showcase automatically deserves a compliment. I think we should respect people for their opinions and the danger of applying negative pressure to criticism is we create a sheltered sphere where everything has to be "positive".

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#300

Post by aemerson_ »

micheljansen wrote: post #118

I really like the aesthetic, both of the product and your website. One point of feedback, since you ask: the website makes it really hard to get a sense of the material. You describe it uses recycled machined aluminium for the body and some polymer, but it's really hard to get a sense of the actual hardware from the CGI renders. One thing that especially jumped out at me was that in the videos, such as this one: http…

Yes you are right, it is hard to get a sense of the materials from these CGI renders. Getting hold of recycled aluminium in small quantities is proving difficult so hence the hedge to say recyclable* not recycled* on the website. I will try hard to make it some % recycled aluminium though.

The grain on the videos is poor and I'll work on that.

The finish of the materials is not finalised but to give you an idea, the case will be a semi-satin anodised aluminium. It will likely be more matte than, say, a Macbook. The plastic will be a matte PBT type hard plastic.

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