Keebtalk post.
Just finished my latest homebuilt board. 3-D printed case, masonite plates, box navy switches, Akko SA-L keycaps.
For this one, instead of manually hand wiring the entire matrix, I designed that part in KiCAD and sent it off to JLCPCB (minimum order quantity also means I have four more of them with no particular need). I still manually wired it to the raspberry pi pico though. There’s also a new and really user-friendly tool called “Pog” for the Python based KMK firmware. That was really nice.
Conceptually, I love it, and I’m subbed to [email protected] but I never learned to touch type properly, so their charms are wasted on me. I even made two handwired ones to try it out (a Planck with an extra column and an ill-considered fixed-wire split that demands either a full 1u pinkie column stagger or none at all), and it turns out I like building more than I like practicing typing. I plug the planck in from time to time when working on something that’s normally headless, but I have grown fond of trundling along at 60-70 wpm on these slightly cursed 1800 variations.
Actually making another one wouldn’t be all that hard. I did a somewhat low-profile numpad that’s basically half of an ortho split anyway.
Fair enough. I sort of idealise simplicity of ortholinear but I’ve also never considered the fact that there would be an annoying learning curve to it.
excellent work nonetheless.
I guess there are probably multiple schools of thought on that, right? Some people would be so locked into their muscle memory that it would be aggravating. For some other people, typing is kind of like playing an instrument and they have that mental plasticity where knowing one “instrument” helps them adapt quickly to a new one. Mentally, I type very much as a hybrid activity blending hand-eye coordination and muscle memory. I can type reasonably well on a non-split ortho, by my standards, but it doesn’t feel better. Splits mess with my head and give me whiplash though, because nothing is anywhere near where it’s supposed to be, purely in my physical field of vision, and the centerline has always been sort of a vague suggestion for me.
You could well adapt very quickly. MicroCenter in the US sells a pretty cheap Planck, and KPRepublic has some reasonably priced ones that go bigger.
I’ll give it a go someday. I’m in the UK, we don’t gave many places to see custom keyboards in person, but I don’t imagine it’d be too difficult to find an ortho PCB and a case to mess around with.