Keyboard Builders' Digest / Projects
Aurora series
The Aurora Series is a collection of DIY kits, based on open-source keyboards, redesigned by splitkb.com.
Published November 3, 2022
Splitkb.com is launching a new product series: the Aurora Series is a collection of well-known community-designed open-source keyboards redesigned to offer the same features.
The Aurora Sweep and Aurora Corne are already live, with the Aurora Lily58 coming soon after, as well as a few others in the coming months: the Aurora Helix and the Aurora Sofle V2 are still in development, and some more kits are planned for next year.
The Aurora Series is a collection of keyboards that all have a common philosophy applied to each of them. We’ve thought long and hard about what makes a good keyboard kit actually good, and have tried to bring that in practice by redesigning and building a large number of keyboards – Thomas Baart.
Common features
- Kits come in three flavors: Choc hotswap, MX hotswap and hand solder (hybrid Choc/MX).
- Powered by either QMK or ZMK firmware, adding support for VIA and Vial in the future.
- Per-key RGB backlighting and underglow.
- OLED displays, like the common SSD1306.
- One or more rotary encoders per half.
- Support for wireless controllers, providing a power switch and a JST jack or connection points for a battery to connect to.
- Support for tenting puck so you can use most camera tripods to tent and tilt both keyboard halves.
- Kits adhere to the original design, and so they’re usually case compatible.
Giving back to the community
All these keyboards rely on community-developed keyboard firmware, so making sure these projects keep improving, with each kit purchase, splitkb will donate €1 to QMK and ZMK.
I hope that in doing so, we can help enable these projects to accomplish even bigger things, giving them the budget to pay for hosting, commission artwork and marketing, help develop online configurators, or anything else the project owners deem necessary. I hope we can start a movement and get more vendors on board, so we can spur on more innovation, together – Thomas Baart.
Resources
Published on Thu 3rd Nov 2022. Featured in KBD #101 (source).
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