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Anatomy of a Mechanical Keyboard (2018)

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Re: Anatomy of a Mechanical Keyboard (2018)

#81

Post by absorber »

melling wrote: post #16
aasasd wrote: post #2

You'd think that with the DIY freedom people would be making Kinesis Advantages and slapping touchpads in the middle. But no, somehow it's the same old flat boards for arms that grow out of the chest and fingers that extend out of the hand instead of rotating on joints; with the typewriters' staggered layout that makes no sense on electronic keyboards. Only now they're a couple centimeters higher so the wrists are ev…

It’s disappointing that there’s so little innovation. Surely, we must have learned more about ergonomics in the past half century? The DataHand was a new interesting “keyboard” design in the 1990’s, about 25 years ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DataHand Btw, Xahlee has a great article on keyboard switches: http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_switch_mechanisms.html

I tried to see if I could make a keyboard with slightly larger keys for my upcoming live music performances and I was thoroughly disappointed:

https://old.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/9g0e24...

Re: Anatomy of a Mechanical Keyboard (2018)

#82

Post by seniorsassycat »

aasasd wrote: post #2

You'd think that with the DIY freedom people would be making Kinesis Advantages and slapping touchpads in the middle. But no, somehow it's the same old flat boards for arms that grow out of the chest and fingers that extend out of the hand instead of rotating on joints; with the typewriters' staggered layout that makes no sense on electronic keyboards. Only now they're a couple centimeters higher so the wrists are ev…

I just finished building my first design. It doesn't include a trackpad but it has curved keys like the kinesis, a thumb cluster that is better then the ergo dox or kinesis (but not perfect). People are building crazy custom keyboards.

https://imgur.com/a/hNcGCwf

My next build will be more ambitious. I want to include a USB hub, a raspberry pi zero, a small screen, and a track{pad,point,ball}.

Re: Anatomy of a Mechanical Keyboard (2018)

#83

Post by tobeportable »

drewg123 wrote: post #71

What I want is a non-radical, normal sized, ergonomic mechanical keyboard. I basically want an MS natural keyboard with a decent feel. Does such a thing exist? Why are so many mechanical keyboards tiny? They don't want to spend the money for more switches? I thought I found something "close enough" in this split mechanical keyboard ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FK74QY5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... ). But it is "tiny"…

> Why are so many mechanical keyboards tiny?

It's more about travel distance from your home row. Adding more modifiers or having vim like modes baked in your keyboard help filling the gap.

Re: Anatomy of a Mechanical Keyboard (2018)

#84

Post by thrwaway442 »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #72
atoav wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a keyboard with silent black MX switches and I never felt any need for clickyness. The cool thing about these linear switches (Black, Red, Silver, Grey) is that you can type extremely silent if you like to, by just hovering the keys or you can type loudly by bottoming them out (if somebody was wrong on the internet or so). When I type silently it is less loud than my lenovo notebook keyboard. For me the click…

> I have a keyboard with silent black MX switches and I never felt any need for clickyness. I had a red keyboard and I never felt that it was necessary. But then I got a blue and I would never go back. Just because the sound isn't necessary or helpful doesn't mean it's pleasing to have it. Like a big moon roof in a car, if you've never had one you may not really see the point, but once you get one the feeling of havi…

I'm having a little trouble following. Do I have this right:

- blues are louder than reds

- You had a red keyboard and you didn't think you needed the noise

- but then you got the blue which was much louder and you enjoyed this

If that's what you mean, what did you mean by this:

>Just because the sound isn't necessary or helpful doesn't mean it's pleasing to have it.

do you mean "just because it isn't necessary doesn't mean it's NOT pleasing to have it" (in fact for you it IS pleasing to have it - you enjoy the noise?)

let me know if I am reading your comment right. it sounds like you very much enjoy hearing loud clicks, to the point of installing a program to emulate them.

Re: Anatomy of a Mechanical Keyboard (2018)

#85

Post by Slackwise »

TurboHaskal wrote: post #12
aasasd wrote: post #2

You'd think that with the DIY freedom people would be making Kinesis Advantages and slapping touchpads in the middle. But no, somehow it's the same old flat boards for arms that grow out of the chest and fingers that extend out of the hand instead of rotating on joints; with the typewriters' staggered layout that makes no sense on electronic keyboards. Only now they're a couple centimeters higher so the wrists are ev…

It’s not only the form factor. They’re also obsessed with high resistance switches (going as high as 65 and even 80g activation point) which is sure way to develop RSI. You should aim to go as low as possible but still avoiding accidental activation when resting your fingers on the keyboard. For most people, that means between 30 and 35g. Realforce makes a bunch of them but they’re not held in high regard by the mech…

Actually, increasing resistance has reduced my strain from typing. After a few minutes of typing, I start to bottom out less and less, and instead I feel like I have little shock absorbers under each key, reducing the impact of every press.

As for the community, most seem to dislike high resistance switches, which is why my preference for MX Clears leaves me with few brands to purchase from, and my dream ideal of a higher resistance Topre will probably never happen.

Re: Anatomy of a Mechanical Keyboard (2018)

#86

Post by oposa »

Animats wrote: post #55
oposa wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But 3D printing solved the first problem and they are mostly soldered with wires rather than experimenting with pcbs. It doesn't really. Modern diy culture is ultimately about publishing. That is what puts you on somewhat equal footing with a large entity. What we mostly have with 3d printing is a do-it-for-yourself culture. That is why every institution will have an exclusive maker space, where you will get reprim…

Modern diy culture is ultimately about publishing. That's amusing. But not wrong.

It can of course be discussed but I think many of the 'natural' incentives to organize, or even notice something, like scarcity and expense isn't there anymore. These days there are just so much to compete with.

I guess what people try to do instead is to make things modular. But then you might still end up with a few companies like adafruit and sparkfun running most of the show.

The only good example I can think of is modular synths, which seems to have enough layers to be able to offer the "choose your own adventure" in meaningful way. There I could see how you could make something that people would want to "pull" from you, rather than having to "push" it. But on the other hand I don't know it that well.

Re: Anatomy of a Mechanical Keyboard (2018)

#87

Post by erikerikson »

mruts wrote: post #49

I’ve wanted to make a keyboard, but I’m not sure it’s possible to make something materially better than the kinesis advantage. I switched to it 10 years after my hands would feel numb after typing. I think I might have some problem other people don’t, but even for normal people, I find it hard to believe that a kinesis wouldn’t be better for them as well. I’ve seen some split diy keyboards, but none of them have the…

I appreciated a lot about the one I got but had a hard time dealing with the increased friction introduced for non-alphanumeric keys I use regularly for programming.

Re: Anatomy of a Mechanical Keyboard (2018)

#88

Post by jacobolus »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #53
jacobolus wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The piano keyboard is pretty poorly designed from a pure user interface standpoint; its design is mostly dictated by the direct mechanical connection to a big bunch of parallel strings. Tons of pianists get RSI, which can seriously impact their careers. It is important for serious musicians to figure out a piano technique which does not require putting too much static load on any of the joints. An improved piano keyb…

I would also imagine manufacturing a piano keyboard is much harder, since it's not a simple on/off switch like computer keyboards. They need to have very precise tactile feel, and support multiple steps of pressure and speed when pressing the keys. It's also an un-chorded interface (pun intended) for traditional pianos. So I'm not really sure how much better it could be made.

If you used hexagonal keys instead of long rectangles, made the keys a bit smaller, arranged them in several rows but not so many columns (so they were all accessible without excessive arm reaching), staggered their heights to make pressing combinations of them as convenient as possible, split the piano into two pieces and tilted them 30–50° upward toward the center (with the idea that each hand stayed on its own side), you’d get something much more comfortable to play and more flexible as an input device. Optimizing the layout would take a considerable amount of research / feedback from musicians.

However, it is likely that some parts of the existing piano repertoire would become significantly harder to play, or at the very least everything would require dramatically different motions vs. the current piano, requiring any aspiring player to completely re-learn how to play on the new design. But in trade many new types of note combinations would become dramatically easier.

I can’t see pianists who play e.g. 18–19th century piano pieces taking this up in significant numbers, but it would be great for people developing new music.

Even the Jankó keyboard never saw any significant adoption, and that is a much less radical and more obvious improvement of the previous design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard

Re: Anatomy of a Mechanical Keyboard (2018)

#89

Post by lagadu »

atoav wrote: post #38
thrwaway442 wrote: post #34

Now seems like a good time to ask: does the loud, audible click of a mechanical keyboards increase the user's accuracy? Are our ears in the loop, consciously or not? A family member had a mechanical keyboard with a cherry mx switch and I tried it out with an online typing test I'd tried before. I could type about 20% faster than usual, which is already way up there. I easily hit 135+ in several segments[1], which is…

I have a keyboard with silent black MX switches and I never felt any need for clickyness. The cool thing about these linear switches (Black, Red, Silver, Grey) is that you can type extremely silent if you like to, by just hovering the keys or you can type loudly by bottoming them out (if somebody was wrong on the internet or so). When I type silently it is less loud than my lenovo notebook keyboard. For me the click…

You can get the tactile feedback from the keyboard minus the sound, it's what the brown switches do :)

Re: Anatomy of a Mechanical Keyboard (2018)

#90

Post by the_pwner224 »

thrwaway442 wrote: post #84
the_pwner224 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a keyboard with silent black MX switches and I never felt any need for clickyness. I had a red keyboard and I never felt that it was necessary. But then I got a blue and I would never go back. Just because the sound isn't necessary or helpful doesn't mean it's pleasing to have it. Like a big moon roof in a car, if you've never had one you may not really see the point, but once you get one the feeling of havi…

I'm having a little trouble following. Do I have this right: - blues are louder than reds - You had a red keyboard and you didn't think you needed the noise - but then you got the blue which was much louder and you enjoyed this If that's what you mean, what did you mean by this: >Just because the sound isn't necessary or helpful doesn't mean it's pleasing to have it. do you mean "just because it isn't necessary doesn…

Yes, I missed the 'not'. I do enjoy hearing the keyboard.
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