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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

#631

Post by spartanatreyu »

ugh123 wrote: post #615
cantSpellSober wrote: post #570

Cool, congrats and thanks for sharing, we need more competition here 1. raised/indented keys will get dirty really fast, an option without would sell me 2. 2-device pairing is great, your competitors have 3 though 3. hot-swap keycaps would be a huge sell 4. nice typography, why isn't the logo in it? take off the logo 5. replace the empty area with home => end 6. 3 modifiers on the left, 3 right please! (not 4-left/2-…

Learned a new term today! > 14. add clit mouse https://xkcd.com/243/

I've just spent so much time right now thinking about the phrase "clit mouse" that I can't remember the official term any more.

And now I'm afraid of what I might automatically say without thinking the next time it happens to come up in conversation.

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

#632

Post by Sugimot0 »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #378

Low 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: h…

I had to scroll so far to see this comment! Glad to see someone mentioned r/ergomechkeyboards and even the lowpro discord! I was really surprised there wasn't more mention of either here since there's much more low-pro / minimal ergo designs out there.

I think anybody interested in a low pro, minimal, ergo design, with great build quality should checkout the corneish zen. I'm really happy I got in on the last round and I cant wait for my 3x5 to come in with LDSA caps and the new tactile sunset switches. Darryl at LowProKB is a mad scientist.

https://lowprokb.ca/products/corne-ish-zen

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

#633

Post by agentwiggles »

TylerE wrote: post #621
agentwiggles wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One funny thing about being a largely self-taught guitarist is that I spent years with the instrument not knowing the names of the notes I was playing. Especially since guitarists tend to play a lot of tablature, you can get surprisingly adept without knowing the notes. This works out ok for a while, but eventually becomes limiting as you try to expand your fretboard and music theory knowledge.

Guitar is much easier since it's just notes... whereas on piano a given interval can need a different stretch depending on the notes.

Absolutely! In fact a pretty common entry point to gaining fretboard knowledge is to learn various interval shapes across string groups, usually starting with octave shapes. Then you move on to major and minor thirds, and fifths.(Although I'm sure for many self taught guitarists, like me, you learn a 5th shape before anything else, since this forms the common and remarkably useful "power chord").

It's complicated a bit by that pesky 2nd string, which is tuned to a major 3rd from the 3rd string (all other string pairs have an ascending 4th between them). But still quite useful in helping new players learn to get around the fretboard.

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

#634

Post by joveian »

Fetiorin wrote: post #481
ponyous wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wondering, but is ortholinear actually better? It's not like my fingers are 4 parallel lines. And I don't have hands perfectly straight on the keyboard either - hands come in at an angle.

Note that on normal keyboard all alpha keys are staggered to the left. For both hands. So, this stagger is not helping you to keep your left hand at correct angle. "Grid" ortholinear is not an ultimate solution either, but it is more comfy (from personal experience). There is a short video about ortho vs stagger https://youtu.be/Ho_CFfdsmc8

That is strange now that you mention it, I have a split keyboard and it really should be staggered the other way on the left side but isn't. Also, I think the top row stagger is a bit too large but the bottom row stagger is way too much. I haven't tried the linear but my impression is that a slight stagger in the correct direction for each hand would be best, although linear seems likely to be close enough in about the same way that the top row stagger is close enough on the right hand.

One thing I like about my keyboard is that home, page up, page down, and end are on the left so that it is symmetrical. It also has a tenting feature that I like, having the keys tilted at an angle is perfect for me. Both of these also allow the mouse to be a bit closer. I also like that the space bars aren't as large, although I wish they were still a bit smaller.

https://shop.goldtouch.com/products/goldtouch-go2-wired-mobi...

I want to remap that useless print screen button near the arrows to a delete key, which I found from a previous keyboard is really handy to have near the arrow keys.

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

#635

Post by todd8 »

It looks really nice; the font is a great choice. However, I've got more keyboards than I really need that are very similar to the featured one, so I'm not interested. HN reader cantSpellSober makes a number of good suggestions, and I'll add one more. I would like more keyboards that let the thumbs do more work.

The spacebars on Apple laptops are shorter, on my current Apple laptop the left end of the spacebar starts between the X and C key and extends to the boundary on the right between the M and the The Moonlander, Kinesis Advantage, Keyboard.io, and the Truly Ergonomic Cleave keyboard all give the thumbs a few easy to use keys. These can generally be bound to Ctrl, Alt, Backspace, ESC or other keys commonly used when doing programming. I've got a number of these keyboards and I much prefer them. Just having a split spacebar would allow Vim or Emacs users a convenient leader key.

One other point, I place very little value on media keys and analog value controls. I'm mostly typing while coding, adjusting volume isn't something I do except when playing games or creating media assets and even then it comes up very rarely.

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

#637

Post by AndrewChamp »

ugh123 wrote: post #615
cantSpellSober wrote: post #570

Cool, congrats and thanks for sharing, we need more competition here 1. raised/indented keys will get dirty really fast, an option without would sell me 2. 2-device pairing is great, your competitors have 3 though 3. hot-swap keycaps would be a huge sell 4. nice typography, why isn't the logo in it? take off the logo 5. replace the empty area with home => end 6. 3 modifiers on the left, 3 right please! (not 4-left/2-…

Learned a new term today! > 14. add clit mouse https://xkcd.com/243/

No post body was provided.

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

#638

Post by ivanjermakov »

Sugimot0 wrote: post #632
ivanjermakov wrote: post #378

Low 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: h…

I had to scroll so far to see this comment! Glad to see someone mentioned r/ergomechkeyboards and even the lowpro discord! I was really surprised there wasn't more mention of either here since there's much more low-pro / minimal ergo designs out there. I think anybody interested in a low pro, minimal, ergo design, with great build quality should checkout the corneish zen. I'm really happy I got in on the last round a…

Indeed. By the post title I hoped to see link to something like Ferris Sweep github page with open source PCB and QMK/ZMK configuration.

I was disappointed that traction was gained by (subjectively) horrible row-stagger layout on a non-split board without extensive configuration capabilities.

Regarding lowprokb's corne it is worth mentioning that $320 for board is a lot in a low profile community. If one capable of soldering board by themself you can get pretty much any layout under $150 (for USB version, BLE MCUs are a little more expensive).

Price list would look something like this (shipping included):

- $20: x2 ProMicro (type C version exists on Aliexpress) microcontroller

- $50: x5 JLCPCB PCB print (you cannot order less than 5 PCBs so you'll have spare parts)

- $30: x50 Kailh low profile switch (you might need less that that)

- $50: x50 MBK low profile keycaps

-~$150: Total, excluding soldering iron and consumables.

Often low profile boards are caseless, meaning that PCB is open[0].

[0]: https://ik.imagekit.io/dkptz7znccj/wp-content/uploads/2022/0...

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

#639

Post by fomine3 »

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'll never buy non-split keyboard, but still fine to use it sometimes.

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

#640

Post by fomine3 »

Festro wrote: post #2

Looks really nice BUT: There's a split between what people online post pics of on fancy desktop setups and what people prefer to use as their daily driver. Minimal keyboards are for minimalists, and people who like to show of their setups. Just like desktop vanity posts typically have speakers, yet everyone uses headphones. Anecdotally there was a post recently on some PC subreddit asking what keyboard people preferr…

Mostly agree (I don't like reducing keys movement like 50% keyboard) but a counterpoint: I never want a tenkey on the right of the keyboard. It makes my mouse (trackball) located far away. Even if I need to type much numbers, I'll put dedicated tenkey on the left of the keyboard (or the center of the split keyboard). For who really want a tenkey, I wonder what's wrong with dedicated USB tenkey.
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