Looks great, and it's a huge achievement to design something so sleek and alluring like this. Bravo on including an encoder. I would be interested in buying, but I can't ever go back to a staggered layout. Even straight but ortholinear boards are a strain. Something like the Keyboardio Atreus with an extra column on the sides would be ideal- small enough to travel with, enough keys to not need a huge amount of layers.
I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
371–380 of 688 posts
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#372I want to hear more about what you expect the rotary encoder to be used for. You clearly put a lot of thought into making it happen, so - why? I feel like there must be some interesting use cases, but I'm drawing a blank.
I’m sure I’d use it as a physical volume knob
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
^ agree, I mean did the OP expect to make a polarizing product like the keyboard without some criticism? also, this thread is a gold mine of insight they can use to refine their product for the market. ie take off the stupid orange knob and hide the made in the uk nonsense and stop naming the product like a mars bound space rocket
“The Market” isn’t “readers of Hacker News.” It’s part of the market, but it would be foolish to let critiques here drive decisions. If we listened to Hacker News Dropbox potentially wouldn’t have been a thing.
it's not a thing just use rsync.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
> drop the rotary encoder, it messes up the height for packing the keyboard away If that's really a concern the correct approach would be to make the knob low-profile. > What ergonomic job does this design serve? This does not claim to be an "ergonomic" keyboard.
> messes up the height for packing the keyboard away You design things for how they are used. If it is a keyboard meant to live out it's life on desk, then why design for how it is packed away? Perhaps if it was advertised as a portable travel keyboard then designing for storage would make sense.
Well, it is advertised as "ultra-low profile."
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. The rest of the keyboard looks great, the numbers look too large and childish.
I guess it’s intended to be “iconic”, but, well, being iconic often also means increasing the ratio of people who actively dislike it.
Sure but these types of keyboards are niche and not likely to hit mass production. The font on the number keys reminds me of OP-1, a niche luxury synth with a hefty price tag. It’s a good market to budge in because select people are willing to dispense larger sums of money. I wonder how much this one costs.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#376[deleted]
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I'm assuming we're referring to 70 words per minute here? In that case I'd have to agree that while 70 is plenty fast for most practical applications, it seems low for the amount of complexity involved.
For me, I don't type faster than I do because I can't consistently move my fingers faster while maintaining high accuracy. However, that is without any n-grams or other complexities.
OTOH, if you trade off required movement for mental complexity, you might bottleneck on your thinking speed instead of your finger speed. Maybe that's the reason the grandparent isn't/wasn't going faster.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#378Low profile ergonomic mechanical keyboard is a pretty deep hole to dive into.
You can design your own PCB, order it from manufacturer and build the exact keyboard you want (split, wireless, with knobs, any form and key count).
It is not for everyone and might require soldering, but possibilities are endless.
Additional resources:
- r/ErgoMechBoards: https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/
- Low Profile Discord: https://discord.com/invite/dBSRZ2a
- Collection of split low profile mechanical keyboards: https://kbd.news/tag/low-profile/
- "A Tiny, Ultra-Affordable Keyboard You Can Build Yourself!" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqpBKuEVinw
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#379There'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 creat…
The great value of HN is in the empowerment of its jerks.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#380Why is number row font emphasized? No space between F keys. It helps find the keys faster, for example, in debugging case. I’m happy with Fnatic mini streak keyboard so far.
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