Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial
Behind the scenes #145
Giveaway and advent calendar update, quick news, in the mailbox, meetups, new vendors and discount codes!
Published November 30, 2023
Hey y'all,
PSA:
- Keep an eye on your inbox and spam folder, I have notified only about half of the winners thus far!
- Fill in the November switch purchase form even if you haven't bought anything! I have some cool prizes for you, e.g. what about this nice aluminum keycap set offered by Keygem? ;)
- Plus this year's MK advent calendar starts tomorrow! Stay tuned!
Today's listening? Drop D by Matteo Mancuso. Only press play if you like l'art pour l'art instrumental guitar music:
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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.
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Posts I thought are worth sharing:
- Ergonaut One is a split with KS33 switches released by the newly formed team of Ergonaut Keyboards.
- VU.A is a fully wireless split with row staggering – designed by EagleVee.
- Joe Scotto is back with a very low profile handwired unibody split: ScottoWings.
- A 34-key diodeless split for larger hands: YetiS by jogme.
- This one gave r/emk admins some work because of all the reports. Nevertheless, as standard as this row-staggered keyboard looks like, Jamie Ding's Pome76 behaves like a "unibody ergo". How? Just check out the keymap.
- Gleb Sabirzyanov published his Tern Ble, a wireless remix of the Tern keyboard.
- The bunchiez40 is an ultracompact ortholinear keyboard designed by Christian Lo – with mouse switches!
- Tardigrade shared some 3D models to fill the gaps of Alice boards.
- Other open source: Rolio46.1 released by MickiusMousius. And a numpad with WaveShare RP2040 Matrix MCU by Ben Clarke (github).
- High Plains Drifter (HPD) is the newest split model of ergohaven. (I've been using their Planeta at home and a Glove80 at work, and the HPD seems like a love child of the two.) In addition, the Ergohaven Planeta case is now open source.
- Budget: I'm a big fan of cardboard prototyping when it comes to ergo keyboards. It turns out this works for classic layouts too: cardboard case by Mediocre_Ad5863. But there was a handwired ortho board made of leftover vinyl flooring too. Committed by tschibo00.
- There's a short interview with CeraKey's founder over at gamepro.com.au.
- Dodecahedron switch holder by hllvnd. And a similar one from 2018.
- Closed source, commercial, N/A: Tomy announced by mikethetiger_ (keyboardarcade.xyz). Wing18 Alpha by EricaAngelASMR.
- Switches: WS Jades with metal inserts in the stem and tube base, and pressure sensitive switches on the Teenage Engineering EP-133 K.O. II sampler:
- Finally, some history/art for ya: Holborn 9120 terminal from 1981. Only about 200 pieces were made.
Advent calendar
The time has come, this year's advent calendar starts tomorrow. Yay! It seems at least two authors won't be able to deliver. If anyone is interested, you can still join and will have 2-3 weeks to come up with something cool. Feel free to contact me any time.
Anyway, I try to not take this too seriously, I mean the calendar format. I will probably publish articles as they arrive, until they last, trying not to go crazy – in contrast to last year.
Giveaway update
Don't let your guard down, keep an eye on your inbox and spam folder! I have notified only about half of the winners yet!
Jeez, I thought it would be much easier to contact winners and distribute prizes if I collect your preferences and all the shipping info in advance, but it's still very slow. I'm at contacting winner #30… Only 40 to go.
There will be some minor leftover prizes, and e.g. Keygem offered a cool aluminum keycap set after the application form was closed. So I thought I'd give these away later: e.g. as an incentive for you to fill out the November switch purchase poll. Fill it out even if you haven't bought anything!
Back to the anniversary giveaway, there were only a couple of hundreds of applications, but it's all good. Nowhere near the number of newsletter subscribers which makes sense, a lot of early subscribers have probably lost interest and don't read the weekly write-ups, some of you get the mails in your spam folder, etc. It's even better this way, since the prizes will hopefully go to those who actually read the blog or at least the first sentence of the newsletter or the editorials. ;)
Other than that, there were only 8 entries I had to disqualify, some folks were not able to process the two-three simple rules.
Again, thanks for participating and thanks to all the vendors who offered prizes for this event:
Bastard Keyboards, Capsule Deluxe, Chosfox, Custom Keyboard Co., Cyboard, Dangkeebs, FalbaTech, Goblintechkeys, Green Door Geeks, Heavymetalkeyboards, Keeb.supply, KEEBD, Keebmonkey, Kemove, Keyboard.io, Keycapsss, KEYGEM, KHOR, Kinetic Labs, Krome Keycaps, Little Keyboards, Mechanicalkeyboards.co.id, Mechboards, Mechbox, Mintlodica, Momokai, Turtlekeebs, Upgrade Keyboards, ZSA Technology Labs.
In the mailbox
Robin sent me a minipeg48 and kowgary16 to turn my orphan bancouver40 into a cfx-spaced collection. :D In the parcel there was also a dedicated keycap set for the kowgary, this numpad/macropad accompanion to the two "larger" boards. I liked the centered digits of the original render, but the production version is nice too. The caps with the symbols are even nicer. Thanks!
Sorry for the nude pics, I don't have any spare choc switches at hand:
Yep, they come in cool pouches, even the optional rotary encoder has its small pouch. :D By the way, the encoder cap is metal, much better than cheap plastic ones.
Donations
- No new donor this time.
- As always, many thanks to everyone who helped this project thus far, especially to regular supporters. Without you, this project wouldn't have survived for 3 years.
There are new donation options if PayPal scares you off.
Meetup database
Upcoming:
- NYC Mechanical Keyboard Meetup, Dec 3, New York.
- 8th Swiss MK Meetup, Dec 10, Zürich, CH
New addition:
- NoVa meetup, Jan 27, Arlington, VA, US.
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.
Vendor database
New shops and updates to the database of keyboard vendors this week – with some new coupons:
- KNC Keys offered you a 5% discount (code: KBDNEWS).
- keycapor.com is an online store based in China, selling artisans and keycap sets. Tony offered you a 10% discount (code: KBDNEWS) for new and existing customers – thanks! (However, there's a one-time 20% discount for subscribing at the shop so you should use that during your first purchase.)
- WhackyDesks ships only to Germany and Austria (yet?), but check it out anyway. Chris offered you a 5% discount (code: KBDNEWS) – thanks!
- Ctrl-T Keys, US, added.
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Still with me?
Of all the inventions of the last 100 years, the dry erase board has to be the most remarkable.
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That's all for today. Thanks for checking by. As always: Keep learning and building! And now let's get back to work.
Until next time,
Tamás
Published on Thu 30th Nov 2023. Featured in KBD #145.
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