Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial
Behind the scenes #138
Quick news, donation issues, Hammond + Videoton in the mailbox, meetups, updates, etc.
Published October 6, 2023
Hey everyone,
Welcome back for another weekly recap and behind-the-scenes write-up.
If you are new to kbd.news, you can read how this started out and what this is all about nowadays. If you like what you see, subscribe to the newsletter (free) and donate some bucks to keep this otherwise free and ad-free project alive.
Reading for the weekend
- Your favorite switches? Milktooth's Kevin helps us to capture the zeitgeist and identify last month's most popular switches for mechanical keyboards. Let me know if this summary/format is something you find useful and we'll try to turn it into a series.
- The Dilemma Max is an ergo split keyboard by Bastardkb – with number row and trackpad. The board was announced on discord at the time of the interview, but Quentin wanted to give his community a headstard with preorders.
- History time! My latest acquisition is a specimen of the pretty unique Hammond typewriters. Full of crazy features, the non-QWERTY layout is probably the least peculiar one of them.
- It turned out that RGBKB's split ortho Mün 2, mentioned last week, is now open hardware. Check out the repo.
- A handwired low-pro unibody keyboard by Joshua Chung: Flynn – with case files.
- Severin Meyer published Chrumm, a gorgeous unibody split with flexible PCB and fixed tenting.
- The Gboard team is back with another weird input device: the portable and fashionable Gboard CAPS – which is a functioning hat keyboard! I'm especially proud and grateful for Ikeji, part of the dev team, sending me a heads-up before/upon publishing the project. Only if I read my emails!
- Protieusz made Alien Invader, a PCB with on-board RP2040 for Joe Scotto's originally handwired Scotto Invader.
- Shark's 4 years – an article on the occasion of this extensive IBM knowledge base turning four. Well, a month ago, but I missed the DM.
- Software/Tools: cyanophage.github.io – an online tool for comparing logical layouts. rumcake is a rust-based mechanical keyboard firmware by Univa. Some background in this r/mk post. And admwscki made a Via layout browser – demo here.
- Tip: Stephen shared some of his experiences with the Glove80 travel case.
- Closed source/WIP: A beginner-friendly Preonic/Lumberjack style to-be-kit from Jerrin. Some files will be shared later. Hotswap 60% ortho with trackpad by le1ca. And Gennnki made a layered case / tenting dock for his Swoop.
- IC/GB/commercial: Split65 is a wireless split walnut Alice keyboard.
- Spotting: ICBM launch keyboard posted by b214n.
Donations
- Some difficulties with PayPal still persist. Every now and then, some recurring payments are not processed. My income from this blog has almost halved compared to the previous month. I'll have to look into alternatives.
- But there are two new donors: Ben M and Clacky! (Clacky is the mascot of a team of German community members). Thank you guys!
- And as always, many thanks to everyone who helped this project thus far, especially to regular donors. Without you, this project wouldn't turn 3 in a few weeks.
In the mailbox
I played with the Hammond 2 all week, the research took a lot of time. But there's something else to show off: this Videoton keyboard has just arrived. Sorry for the dirt, I had barely time to unpack it:
The case of this hefty bad boy is made of 4-5 mm thick metal, too heavy for the laboratory scales I have laying around my office. And it's ridiculously high, about 11 cm. 😲
In this photo you can see it next to the Intergraph, featured last week, and just for fun I put my Bancouver40 in between them. 🤣
Cleaning, disassembly soon.
Meetup database
Upcoming:
- 2023 Motor City Mech Meetup, Oct 7, Detroit, MI.
- October NoVa Meet, Oct 7, Arlington, VA.
New additions:
- Tex Mechs Dallas October Meetup, Oct 21, Dallas. (Thanks Jan!)
- NYC MK Meetup, Dec 3, New York. (Thanks Gordon!)
- TexMechs Keyboard Roundup, Apr 27, 2024, Dallas.
As always, this meetup database is both a calendar and an archive so feel free to send me upcoming events or even ones from the recent past to make this collection as comprehensive as possible.
Developments
- I haven't wrapped up posts into issues for months. The last issue in the old structure was in June I guess. This week I processed everything posted in the last couple of months. I also added the "quick links" from the weekly editorials. It was quite a challenge: https://kbd.news/archive/
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Still with me?
- My girlfriend started smoking. What should I do?
- Slow down and use lube.
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That's all for today. Thanks for checking by. As always: Keep learning and building!
Until next time,
Tamás
Published on Fri 6th Oct 2023. Featured in KBD #138.
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