A complete guide to building a hand-wired keyboard (2020)

A complete guide to building a hand-wired keyboard (2020)
crackedthecode.co

The "keep hands on home row" is the motivation behind omitting the "unnecessary" keys, at least for the keyboards which use a small spacebar and give the thumbs more keys to use.

With those small 36-key keyboards, your hands pretty much have nowhere to go except to remain on home row.

> as many keys as possible

I once saw someone made a keyboard with 450 keys. https://relivesight.com/projects/433/

What I've seen happen though is that especially on linux you need two-modifier combos (ctrl-shift/ctrl-alt) to perform what you could have done with a single Fn keystroke. Or burn a few extra keys and increase complexity with layers. I went this route a decade ago, and I'm not a fan personally. Removing the Fn row saves 2cm of vertical space from your desk. I see it as completely pointless, even if you never use the Fn keys.

And I don't buy the "reduced finger travel" argument either. Holding the modifiers in weird positions to access an extra layer is usually worse than a more spacious keyboard where your hands can be kept further apart and require less chording.

But yeah... I commented on another thread on keyboards, and the current keyboard craze is mostly about customization and looks, and very little about the actual typing experience IMHO (there are exceptions of course..).

The number pad is another example of this. Typing numbers is massively more comfortable (and quicker too) on the number pad than it is with the row of numbers just below the F-keys.

The amount of desk space people save is so negligible, particularly when people who buy these keyboards typically work in “paperless” offices, that I never understood the appeal.

I guess it boils down to people wanting their keyboards to look pretty rather than being actually useful.

If you can do CAD you can probably also design a PCB with a socket for some kind of general purpose MCU or even one of ready-made keyboard controllers.

Through-hole soldering is IMO actually simpler than making these "spiders" (that's how in my country we call circuits with self-supported wire to wire joints, usually with at least some components hanging in air by their leads).

"Spiders" are prone to breaking with any repeatable mechanical strain. In case of this keyboard, what I am seeing is the plastic board will flex and will put repeatable strain on the wires, possibly leading to malfunction at some point. PCB would be much more reliable (if done correctly) as it would take most or all of the load from the joints.

A thicker PCB board would actually be more stiff than the plastic board you have here. Not only materials of PCBs tend to be very tough, the PCB, being below the level of the switches, would need much less cutouts that are weakening your plastic mounting board.

Stiffness of the board the switches are mounted to is important not just for the reliability, but also for the overall feel of the mechanical keyboard. This "feel" is mainly affected by the switches, the stiffness of the board, and the acoustics of the enclosure.

And lastly, as an amateur EE I find "spiders" appealing (if done nicely, artfully). But if you want to showoff for the larger audience that just "don't get it", a custom PCB would immediately score more points.