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

electronicmaterialsoffice.com

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

#1

Post by aemerson_ »

Hi HN,

During lockdown I took up the keyboard hobby but I couldn't find anything I liked the aesthetic of. So I set out to design my own keyboard from scratch that shunned the gamer look in favour of a more minimal, serious design.

I've built several prototypes but I would love to get some feedback from the HN community.

I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
electronicmaterialsoffice.com

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

#2

Post by Festro »

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 preferred, and the overwhelming support was for 100%+ keyboards. Only people who didn't WFH much, or didn't have jobs involving any data entry at all could do without a numpad.

So, make a full version? People might think they're a bit ugly, but they're popular despite people being less willing to show off a massive keyboard.

You're right about the damn 'gamer' look though. The only good thing about the gamer look is that I will trust it has decent switches in it.

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

#3

Post by public_defender »

This looks super cool.

1) Do you have an estimate for cost and date it will ship?

2) What's the deal with the rotary encoder? How will it be used by default? How will we remap it, etc.?

Edit:

3) I would really like to have Home, Insert, and End keys. I'm not sure that's worth a change in the keyboard layout, but consider this: having three or four assignable keys. You can sell keycaps for them.

4) I would use this because I carry around a lot of stuff. Either having a low-profile keycap for the rotary encoder, or having some way to easily take it off or collapse it down would be really helpful.

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

#5

Post by pmontra »

What's the purpose of the rotary encoder?

On a laptop the number pad is deadly because the screen and the keyboard are fused together and to have the touchpad / spacebar aligned with the axis of the body all the laptop is shifted to the right.

On desktops I seldomly use the number pad but as I can shift the keyboard to the right so I have no problem buying keyboards with it. Unfortunately it moves the mouse further away and makes it more uncomfortable (timewise) to use.

If I'll ever use a desktop full time again I'll buy a USB touchpad and keep it where it rests on a laptop and use the mouse for games, not every year.

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

#6

Post by jacknews »

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…

I disagree, I've been using laptop, or tenkeyless, or currently a 65-key optical mechanical keyboard, for forever. I almost never use the numpad, or pgup/home etc keys (vim user), and rarely function keys, so they just get in the way.

Keyboards are quite a personal thing, I think there's room for many different designs.

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

#10

Post by dcminter »

Very pretty. I'm tempted.

Will it work properly on Linux via bluetooth? E.g. I have a very nice mechanical keyboard from Keychron but over bluetooth it does something weird so that a hack [1] to use it in Mac mode is necessary and some key combos still don't work right for me.

On a similar note, if its firmware needs an update will I be able to do that from Linux?

It's a hard life being a Windows/Mac hater :D

[1] https://gist.github.com/andrebrait/961cefe730f4a2c41f57911e6...

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