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Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial

Behind the scenes #170

Keyboard projects, quick news, in the mailbox, meetups, new vendors and discount codes!

dovenyi
Published July 26, 2024
Creators! Feel free to tip me off about your keyboard related projects to bring them to 140K readers.

Hey, what's up 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.

Some posts worth sharing

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  • I tested Wind Studio's WIND X80, a visually clean yet very refined F13 TKL keyboard kit with endless customization options.
  • Rafael Romão shared his Diamond, a 24-key handwired Dactyl-like board.

Pic: Diamond

Diamond

Pic: Sexy Artsey

Sexy Artsey

  • Gleb is back with a classy one-handed chording keyboard: the 10-key Sexy Artsey.
  • LeBallz is a Le Chiffre variant by Protieusz – with a 25mm trackball and an optional EC11 encoder.

Pic: LeBallz

LeBallz

Pic: Kingslayer 28

Kingslayer 28

  • The Kingslayer 28 is a custom gaming keypad designed by Ognjen Bjeletic.
  • A stunning unibody split with optional encoder: Ashwing66 by James Gzowski.

Pic: Ashwing66

Ashwing66

Pic: wjrii's board

wjrii's board

  • A hybrid wired no-stabs 1800 keyboard: N3v4 by wjrii.
  • CrackerBot's Crowkb_46 is a split 3x6 with low placed thumb clusters.

Pic: Crowkb_46

Crowkb_46

Pic: ScottoHazard

ScottoHazard

  • A handwired split ortho by Joe Scotto: ScottoHazard.
  • A 18-key unibody split: Smiler18 designed by weykn.

Pic: Smiler18

Smiler18

Pic: PG1316S vs PG1316M

PG1316S vs PG1316M

  • The Alpinist, published by Ben Hastings, is a tool generating parametric keyboards with arbitrary numbers of keys on each row – using Python's cadquery.

Pic: Alpinist Keyboard Generator

Alpinist Keyboard Generator

Pic: HillSideView

HillSideView

Some closed-source and WIP projects:

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Pic: Keyboard Marine V1

Keyboard Marine V1

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  • I don't have 20 mins to watch this video by Christian Selig, but it was recommended so here it is. I see it's a split project mentioning Ergogen. May make a post later. Anyway:

Keyboard art

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  • This packaging of the HMX film switches deserves a feature too (photo by eddiez87):

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Kbd.news to the rescue

This blog has about 2,400 entries at the moment, and I'm always glad when people discover old write-ups every now and then. LHF, a Chinese collector of vintage test equipment & computer related stuff contacted me this week. He sourced a Philips P817 terminal recently, with its original keyboard – cable cut off. The Philips PMDS article helped to breath life into his keyboard!

[…] I almost started reverse engineering the circuit. But after I searched on google using the picture of my keyboard, I found your article, even coming with the picture inside the connector housing, which clearly shows how the colored cables should be connected. That was exactly what I needed! After some dirty temporary soldering, I managed to connect the keyboard to the terminal and what a surprise, it worked! Your single picture just saved me tons of time and probing! – LHF.

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Cleanup

Speaking of vintage terminals, my wife asked me to clean up the terrace which has become another storage area for my vintage stuff recently. So I was cleaning some keyboards this week.

E.g. this Videoton terminal keyboard manufactured in 1977.

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Top switch compilation – hopefully back

Inspired by a recent conversation and request, I'm in the midst of resurrecting the monthly switch top list, originally done in collab with Milktooth's Kevin.

This month I reached out to a lot of vendors and manufacturers, still waiting for some feedback, but have already a handful of individual top10 lists. I'm really interested in the best-selling switches of various regions and niches.

Had high hopes initially to be able to automate this process, but most stores use Shopify, and the public best-seller pages of Shopify stores show lifetime stats, unfortunately. And not many folks would like to give me access to their live sales stats, obviously :) – which means I won't be able to fetch this data automatically and will have to rely on shop runners' reports.

Anyway, it will be a lot of work but I hope this will work on the long run and you will find it useful.

Donations

  • No new donor this time. Instead, PayPal started acting weirdly again.
  • As always, 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

OK, I'm officially overwhelmed. 6 boards waiting for review, no idea how I'll manage this.

  • Joe Scotto's ScottoWing kit
  • Wind Studio X80 – the launching date yesterday gave me a little motivation to build it.
  • Moeetech's Glitter65 R2 (not R1v2 but R2!) arrived in a gorgeous color. I left it in my office so photos later. Sales only start in a month, so I still have time for this.
  • a Hexgears gamer board with display – finally a pre-built one! :)
  • Wind/DaringRun Flip 6P
  • and I'd like to cover (and use!) the Mantis too!

Because of the many barebone kits arriving, I ordered a heap of stabs. Got tired of eviscerating previous builds.

Meetup database

Upcoming meetups:

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

Feel free to use the KBDNEWS discount code at 157 keyboard shops! And do not hesitate to report any issues. I know, I know. Some reports are still pending. I'll get there eventually, thanks.

  • ButterBoard offered you a 5% discount. The code is "BB5" at the moment, but I asked Gergő to update it to KBDNEWS.
  • Last days of Modern Coup Design Studio's July offer: 10% discount off all their nice keyboard sleeves. Use the KBDNEWS coupon code.

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That's all for today. Thanks for checking by. As always: Keep learning and building!

Until next time,
Tamás

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Published on Fri 26th Jul 2024. Featured in KBD #170.


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