Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial
Behind the scenes #147
Quick news, in the mailbox, meetups, new vendors and discount codes!
Published December 15, 2023
Hey y'all,
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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I'll spare you the trouble this time and won't stuff down your throat anything, in particular a 20 minute prog-metal masterpiece performed by one of my favorite bands.
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Posts I thought are worth sharing:
- Philip Lalonde writes about fan art: mashing up the graphic design and keyboard hobbies.
- Jesse Vincent of Keyboardio describes building a force tester out of an old 3D printer: Forcy McForceFace.
- The team behind KeebSupply sums up the past year and what inspired them to open an online shop for keyboards.
- WayduhKBD writes about learning PCB design and stonework.
- Pete Johanson sums up the early days of ZMK, everyone's favorite wireless first firmware, and looks into the future.
- Sadek Baroudi wrote about the inception and significance of VIK, a standardized interface for keyboards (and more).
- Here is the story of the CLP profile, vvhg's personal keycap project, with a narrative arc starting from scavenged typewriter caps. :D
- A clever PCB with two different layout options, one on each side: Qazikat by weteor.
- ProtieusKeeb's monoblock Sentinel, inspired by Le Chiffre, comes with an interchangeable trackball unit.
- Nyan Keys is an FPGA based mechanical keyboard engineered for low latency – open sourced by rekcats.
- More open source: bx01 gaming keyboard/macropad by Baxtrom and a beefy split (or two) by PaxUX.
- Tool: rianadon open sourced the Cosmos generator. Related blog post.
- Reverb IC/GB at mechboards.co.uk. This unibody split is too cool to not to be featured despite my general reservations about group buys.
- The humbly named Masterpiece I/O from Masterpiece, a two-sibling company.
- Triple shot PBT caps by Ducky. But why lowercase latin alphas as sublegends?!
- Week of giveaways on r/mk. I was relieved when these were banned on the sub but I can live with it for a week. In addition, last time I discovered some new vendors unknown to me, so now I may stumble upon new discoveries too (I did!).
- Inspiration: Fluorite artisans by KeycapQuarry, and Sneakbox's mujimanic put a watch in an artisan keycap.
I thought I'd share my infusion of horology into the keyboard hobby! Miyo is a 1u MX-stemmed keycap, and a fully functioning quartz watch – muji.
Donations
- Thanks for your donation István K.!
- As always, many thanks to everyone who helped this project thus far, especially to regular supporters.
For all the donation options check out the donation page!
In the mailbox
Nothing in the mailbox this week, but something exciting on the way: Divinikeys' Carl arranged this, and the Daring Run guys sent me a DR-70F (not available yet). Inspired by the TENET70, it's a 70% + 5% with two-in-one layout configuration options and some other cool features. Review soon.
I still haven't decided on the MechKeys offer because I will travel in the next couple weeks so don't want to miss the parcel. Will get back to this early next year I guess. You can still help me: Which keyboard would you like me to review?
Help me to choose! E.g. by commenting here:
MechKeys kindly offered me a keyboard from their store. Since I'm more into custom ergo splits, I thought I'd ask you which keyboard should I review and than give away to one lucky reader. Choose your preference(s) and leave a comment for a chance to win:https://t.co/MApVugy0NZ pic.twitter.com/ATuEnK9v9x
— kbd.news (@KbdNews) December 8, 2023
Meetup database
Upcoming:
- Keyboards Hawaii Year-End Meetup, Dec 17, Honolulu.
New addition:
- Love is in the Keebs, 2024 Feb. 3., San Diego.
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.
Vendors & Discounts
New shops and updates to the database of keyboard vendors this week:
- keysaii (Germany) added. Julius offered you a 10% discount (thanks!) with the KBDNEWS coupon code. Since there's a default opening discount in effect, this coupon will come in handy later.
- mechanicalkeyboards.com offered you a 5% discount (KBDNEWS). Thanks!
- Meletrix (Wuque Studio) (China) added.
- Masterpiece, a two-sibling company based out of Canada.
Developments
Pete Johanson was kind enough to send me his article as a nice markdown document. This could have reduced the uploading and formatting part on my end to a few minutes – only if markdown was properly implemented in my self-made blog engine. :D So I updated some parts of my backend code:
- markdown style embedding of images, blockquote, nested lists (in progress), etc.
- TODO: more testing, and multiline code block formatting and style/css fix (this caused issues in Jesse's article too)
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Still with me?
What do you call a beehive without an exit? Unbelievable.
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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 15th Dec 2023. Featured in KBD #147.
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