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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

#311

Post by da4id »

warp wrote: post #295
ebastler wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why a screen?

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

#312

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

ticklemyelmo wrote: post #291
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.

Having had a fair bit of difficulty keeping my mouse wheel clean, roller style controls would probably similarly accumulate crud. I'd rather have the knob.

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

#313

Post by waaveshine »

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.

Emacs shortcuts are universal in macOS and much more convenient than home/end/delete/etc in my opinion.

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

#314

Post by glxxyz »

smeej wrote: post #137
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…

The font thing is bigger than people might think. As soon as I saw the number row, I had such an immediate and harsh reaction to it that it surprised me. I almost couldn't believe that was the cause, but when I waited for the device to turn around again, that was definitely it. I don't even have to look at my fingers often, but I wouldn't be able to stand walking by those numbers on a regular basis. I don't think I'v…

I've had a dual boiler espresso machine (La Spaziale S1) for 10 years that's a typography horror show. There are less than 10 words on the device and they managed to use 4 completely different fonts: their logo font (which I actually like), a squat serif thing for 'S1', an ugly script font, and worst of all for the 'BOILER' and 'ON/OFF' buttons: Comic Sans. It occasionally bothers me but most of the time I'm able to forget about it and enjoy using it.

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

#315

Post by lloeki »

birdman3131 wrote: post #288
ajross wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that these things are deeply personal. And this one is really, really close to what I'd want myself. Yet... I still wouldn't buy it. Here's what I'm using right now (actually I have the wireless version which they recently stopped producing): https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/accessories-and-software/keyb... But I couldn't deal without the trackpoint, which I use regularly for simple mouse actions even wh…

Its designed for apple and not windows. Note the presence of a command key. Apple calls the backspace key a delete key even though its not. (It may do delete as a shift option.)

> Apple calls the backspace key a delete key even though its not

Historically the backspace key is literally that, moving the typewriter's carriage back (when the space key moves it forward).

On current computers the space key now inserts a "space" character instead of simply moving the cursor a step right.

Backspace isn't symmetric to that anymore, as it doesn't even insert a space back but deletes backwards, so it is (pedantically) a misnomer.

And this is true for "modern" computers, older ones were closer to teletypes and would move back for overwrite (e.g try vi compat mode).

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

#316

Post by glxxyz »

da4id wrote: post #311
warp wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why a screen?

"battery estimate, whether it is trying to pair, or which device it is currently connected to"

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

#318

Post by lbotos »

elliotpage wrote: post #86

Site accessibility note: going to www.electronicmaterialsoffice.com redirects you to a holding page. I'm not sure I'll get one, but I like the site design - it feels almost pornographic.

I read a great article recently about "sexy design" you might like it: https://dirty-furniture.com/article/tell-me-do-you-intend-to...

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

#319

Post by foepys »

peace4all wrote: post #240

I like it being low-profile. That's why I didn't buy ErgoDox. So all the best wishes to the author. But there are some tradeoffs why I probably not buy it. 1) I'd suggest a column of home/page up/page down/end (top to bottom in this order) on the right side, like some laptop makers do. They're very convenient. That's absolutely necessary for text editing or navigating in various windows. (Sure one can use combos, but…

I configured all my programmable keyboards to map Capslock to Fn and use Fn+WASD for cursors keys and Fn+Q for Home and Fn+E for End, so I think that dedicated keys are unnecessary.

I cannot imagine using anything else anymore because it is so insanely convenient to press and hold down Capslock with my pinky finger and browse around text extremely fast.

All my keyboards also map Fn+1 to copy and Fn+2 to insert text which saves additional effort to lift my finger from Fn/Capslock.

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

#320

Post by b20000 »

looks really great, personally i think being able to use it with a cable is a must. i don’t care about bluetooth.

the rotary is a great idea but if you only have one maybe make it so you can spin it with a finger instead of turning it.

what did you use for modeling and rendering software and what did you use to create the website in terms of languages/frameworks etc?

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