Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial
Behind the scenes #161
Keyboard projects, quick news, in the mailbox, meetups, new vendors and discount codes!
Published April 13, 2024
Hey, what's up everyone!
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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.
What about some real music while reading? Before Udio devours a whole industry overnight. (AI is both fascinating and dreadful.) I listened to Upiko all week.
Poll
I'm working on a keymap wizardry series, please fill out this short questionnaire if you have time and want to help. Practically two short questions, can be done in a few seconds. Thanks!
Some posts worth sharing
- This week I reviewed the ErgoDox Hot Dox, another classic design reinterpreted by Alpaca Keyboards. What was once the go-to split board with a hallmark thumb cluster, comes now in a refreshed hotswap version and in a stunning acrylic case.
- Chris Lo's rattlemebonez32 is a 32-key unibody pocket keyboard with minimal Choc spacing, CH552 MCU and FAK firmware.
- The Kai Ascend is a cute split keyboard designed and shared by Kai H. Chang.
- MReavley's split Rzr36 is the BLE Choc version of his earlier Slice36.
- The Woodpecker by Özkan Çelik is a Lumberjack/Lumberelite variant with Cirque trackpad.
- Sneftel's Gull v1 is an ergo unibody split with keywell and unique thumb cluster.
- I have only a youtube teaser (thanks Den!), but T-Keyboard seems something new. The concept is similar to GrabShell, but there are trackpads here, positioned quite interestingly.
- Macoy Madson ended up writing a custom firmware for his Dactyl, using the Pico C SDK and TinyUSB. And here is a blog post with a lot of info.
- Joe Scotto writes about Compiling QMK using Github Codespaces.
- DrZippit made a case for the Aurora Lily58 (printables, reddit).
- WIP: Spaceball42, trackball, wireless, and compatible with GH60 cases. And also a strange handwired one by reporepo344.
- ShelZuuz tested Greyhill 04A-K01 joysticks on a build: "Don't use them".
Keyboard art
- This week was about the solar eclipse in the US, so here is a photo by Peppersheep: "Eclipse filtered through the blinds and projected straight onto the keeb…" (source)
- Stone-style keycaps by taneyats:
- MU01 Mountain Seclusion colorway – a wireless walnut keyboard by Akko. Not in mass production yet, but already teased at the 2024 Global Source Hong Kong Consumer Electronics Show.
- Shelves. Posted by icream4cookies.
Just some build photos:
- Starship Centurion with matching deskmat designed by Philip Lalonde aka jadepug (png images).
Matrix Faukwaa posted by Ookad:
Domain renewal
This is the time of year when the kbd.news domain expires, reminding me to be mindful about another cost. In short: Careful with these fancy domain TLDs like .news…
No wining and definitely not begging for donations this time, I can pay for it, but the point is:
Back in 2021 when I registered kbd.news, it cost me $4.48. Sure, it was a sale, the normal price was about $9 for a year if I remember correctly. Well, next year somehow it cost me $24.48 instead of the $9 previously indicated. Now it's $29.16.
You don't have to explain me inflation, I'm from a borderline third-world post-eastern block shithole of a country. :D However, this is not inflation but monopoly, cartel, lack of competition, you name it. And yep, I could go to a different registrar but it just isn't worth the hassle.
Keymap wizardry – New layout design series
So the SpaceFN tutorial was a hit, it registered 10 times the visits of a normal post. This inspired me to start a long overdue layout design series. I get to this point each year and have a ton of half-baked write-ups, but various things always get in the way and then I forget about this side-project for another year. Now I have some incentive too, because Drop asked me to write some articles for them, and what will be quite in-depth tutorials on kbd.news will be reworked for Drop into a shorter and easier-to-digest format.
I have the whole structure with about 20 drafts and even some fully finished texts waiting to be published. However, I'll have to code some supporting tools and do the scientific groundwork, this is the only risk I can see with timing. I did my research six years ago but for my native Hungarian and my custom physical split layout. Will have to generalize the results and apps I coded, starting with adding English and the standard layout.
TapXR being reviewed
I'm not sure what to say about the TapXR, this wrist-worn keyboard/mouse/controller.
Probably the most unlikely "keyboard" I've ever witnessed: a bracelet for one-handed chorded typing.
It was sent to me by the manufacturer and I can see its purpose in some cases but it doesn't really work for me, at least not reliably enough to use it for anything serious.
Learning the chords took less than half an hour, but I'm still stuck. I really wanted to dedicate enough time to customizing it to my use case, but the problem is really the very hectic and picky translation of gestures into characters, which renders the whole project pretty unusable for me. And now it seems to be partially bricked due to a firmware update. Will have to reach out to support.
Donations
- Yay, new donors! Thanks Robert V. and Micah A. (Sorry, just noticed, I rarely check anything other than PayPal.)
- And many thanks to my awesome regular supporters and everyone who helped this project thus far.
For all the donation options check out the donation page!
In the mailbox
The TapXR I've already mentioned:
Cleaning of one of my latest acquisitions took two days: this Acer ergo from 1997, rescued from a pigsty, literally, is unlikely comfy. I could use it as a daily driver.
Acer ergo (after):
Acer (before):
Visitor stats
What the heck. I don't check stats very often, less frequently than once a month, so was surprised to see that there was a huge peak in the number of visitors. 135,000 unique users in 30 days, with 23K users on a single day. It seems Daniel's advent calendar piece on keyboard encoding was posted on Hacker News and registered a few tens of thousands of visits.
Meetup database
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.
Upcoming meetups
- zFrontier Expo Meetup, April 20, Shanghai, China
- Tiny Little Tech Shop Meetup, April 20, Jacksonville, FL, US
Recently added
- MKKC Spring Meetup 2024, May 18, Kansas City, MO, US
Vendors & Discounts
With the vendor database update cycle finished, I expect much less news in this column. Anyway:
Feel free to use the KBDNEWS discount code at 148 keyboard shops!
I continue checking the coupons, adding new offers and removing inactive ones, but don't hesitate to report any issues.
New shops and updates to the database of keyboard vendors this week:
- What The Thock is a new shop shipping from Australia for now. Run by a nice Australian/Japanese couple with plans to settle in Japan. Anyway, Jake and Emi offered you a 10% discount (code: KBDNEWS).
- Mechanical Keyboards (US) new/old discount. There was a system update at mechanicalkeyboards.com which made the coupon code unavailable for some time. It is back now.
Developments
- Picking up the thread of language statistics and layout design, dusting off my old scripts.
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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 Sat 13th Apr 2024. Featured in KBD #161.
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Keyboard projects, quick news, in the mailbox, meetups, new vendors and discount codes!
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