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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

#401

Post by eigenrick »

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…

If It's ZMK, does this mean I could flash in a new configuration to Dvorak? (I know, Dvorak is a bad habit. I'm trying to quit. Really.)

One bit that I find helpful is that the keycaps are all the same height/angle so that I can rearrange them... hopefully..

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

#402

Post by dont__panic »

I noticed that the audio control keys (back, play/pause, skip) and mute/unmute keys use different F keys on this keyboard (F9-F12) than they are on my keychron, external mac keyboards, and internal mac keyboard (F7-F10).

This keyboard also lacks volume up/down controls.

I wonder why? I understand the lack of backlight control (I don't think this keyboard has a backlight?) and leaving out mission control and expose since those keys have changed every few years in macOS. But volume control is a strange one to omit. Maybe that's what the "rotary encoder" does? This webpage does not make the purpose of the rotary clear, unfortunately.

Moreover, it's strange to use different function keys for these functions for... no apparent reason. Especially if you're not going to put any primary function on F3-F8, why not stay consistent for muscle memory reasons?

I'm also curious if this keyboard HAS to use bluetooth, or if it's capable of wired control via the usb-c cable like my keychron. I hate bluetooth lag, so that's a dealbreaker for me. This webpage should clarify.

This keyboard looks pretty nice, otherwise. As someone who doesn't care to ever use page up/page down/home/end keys, I'll definitely check it out if something ever happens to my K2.

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

#403

Post by infogulch »

wrthfl wrote: post #21

Looks awesome. Hope the rotary encoder is removable as it feels like that would defeat the purpose of a low profile keyboard that I can throw into my backpack when I'm on the move.

Make it removable and make a little cubby at the back for it to clip into so it doesn't stick out or get lost.

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

#405

Post by Night_Thastus »

I'm so glad to see a low-profile mechanical. They feel like they're so rare in the MK community. The design of the keyboard itself looks beautiful. The material and component choice looks great as well!

A couple minor things regarding the website:

* It's super zoomed in for some reason/spacing could use some work

* The "about" page is pretty barren when the text is shrunk to a more reasonable size (50%)

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

#406

Post by easygenes »

Any chance of using alternative switches? I am quite a fan of the very low activation linear keys. There are some 25g Kailh switches that would suit this. They are colloquially known as gChoc, originally light blue and produced on special request, they’re now pink.

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

#409

Post by bckr »

drw85 wrote: post #391
lloeki wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Isn't this kind of a "point of view" thing? Backspace does add a space backwards. If there was a character there, it gets replaced with a space. :D

That's not true though. The remainder of the text buffer is shifted. It really is a deletion and not an addition.
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