Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial
Behind the scenes #171
Keyboard projects, quick news, in the mailbox, meetups, new vendors and discount codes!
Published August 5, 2024
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
- My monthly overview of community favorite mechanical switches, based on real sales data provided by vendors and manufacturers, made some rounds on Friday. I added some late lists (e.g. CandyKeys) and comments (pkkeyboards) on the weekend, and prices too.
- I built and reviewed Joe Scotto's cool ScottoWing DIY kit (PCB edition). It was a great experience, a very easy build, ideal for absolute beginners too.
- Dane Lipscombe released his Tenshi, a split keyboard with slide-adjustable trackpads.
- Jhootdev shared the Jingis 38, an open-source monoblock keyboard with some pinky splay.
- Wabble-60 is a RISC-V-powered BLE ortholinear keyboard designed by Richard Goulter.
- Will Puckett created and shared a shield to convert the classic Apple M0487 keyboard to ZMK/nice!nano.
- Avocado is a wireless 5x3 split keyboard designed by Auryn.
- Jonathan Black released his Lucca 58HE, a Hall-effect split keyboard.
- A wireless unibody split with integrated trackball and more: Ghazal by AlSaMoMo.
- An asymmetric low-profile keyboard for playing MMO games: MMOAbom56 by ujl123.
- Keyboards with confusing aura: Backslash by kiriwari.
- Closed/GB: Zerowriter Ink
- Handwiring: A handwired Katana build by 0x53. A 3D printed offset ortho by AmbitiousSpirit.
- Fat Bee prototype by cassiozen.
- Reex56Mod and Reex67Mod by kushima8. As it is often happens with Japanese projects, the boards are closed-source but available at booth.pm and Yusha Kobo.
- KiiBOOM's aluminum Loop 65 looks not just nice but has an interesting modular structure too. And it's quite affordable.
- Keybridg is, well, a fancy 3mm thick sheet of aluminum if I am not mistaken. Covering your laptop keyboard if you'd like to put your mechanical one on top of it.
Keyboard art
A Redox in a wooden case mimicking stone (by falbatech):
- Split keyboard with mint flavor. Posted by Least-Composer.
- Sunder E70 – an IC by squiyhx_lquid (Hall-effect split ortho).
- Glebs' Sexy Artsy is getting out of hand. A build with tentacles shared by udirona.
In the mailbox
Out of nowhere, I received an 8BitDo mechanical numpad. Wireless, with clicky Kailhs. Probably meant as an accompanion of their retro keyboard I received last year. Chunky and clicky as hell. Oh yes, it works as an independent calculator as well. :) The nice red segmented display resembles the orange plasma display of some retro computers.
Donations
- A new donation by Mario S.! Thanks!
- One recurring donation canceled, another simply doesn't seem to work.
- 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!
Meetup database
I have neglected this part a bit, it's not impossible that I forgot something you sent to me (like the Sacramento and Chicago one, sorry, Berlin comes later, etc).
Upcoming
- Macarel Meetup 2nd Edition, August 10, Toulouse, France
- Sacramento Summer '24 Meetup, August 10, Sacramento, CA, US
- Philadelphia Keyboard Meetup 2024, August 10, Philadelphia, PA, US
Recently added
- Ghent Keeb Meet - Summer 2024, August 24, Gent, Sint-Amandsberg, Belgium
As always, this meetup database serves as 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.
New shops and updates to the database of keyboard vendors:
- CandyKeys: There's a new general/temporary KBDDIGEST discount code (5%) beside the good old but selective KBDNEWS one (0-4%). Merging in progress. You may try both these days.
Top switch compilation
Putting together the switch article was really hard: collecting, tidying up and nicely arranging all this info. After lot of mistakes I ended up with a database-driven approach. But before that…
I'd say half of the vendors and manufacturers I contacted have not responded despite all I asked was a simple top10 list of their best-selling switches of the last 30 days. No sales numbers, no links, nothing, just switch model names to make the task easier for them.
While I, quite unexpectedly, received some really interesting stats too, that means pretty detailed monthly reports of sales, this was an exception. It's completely understandable that most shops don't want me to look into their sales numbers, not to mention granting me access to automatically tapping into their database. I can understand it, although this could make the whole process much easier, most transparent, and would allow me to aggregate the numbers and publish the ultimate top list.
So I came up with an evil master plan for next time. Mwahhahhaa!! Just spread the news and make this post the most read one if you'd like to help – so nobody dares to say "no" next month. :)
Anyway, there's a high risk of errors if you compile an article like this manually, so halfway through copypasting chunks of html, I created some data tables so I can generate these lists and posts semi-automatically.
Which means the article is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a switch database soft launched behind the whole switch thing: with specs, links to offers by some vendors as a start, and also with popularity stats based on the top lists. I don't want to advertise these WIP pages yet, but if you've read this far, you may as well check it out. ;) Full of flaws and half-baked ideas, really WIP.
Included are basically, instead of a 2,000+ strong list of all the switches out there, only the most popular ones, mentioned at least in one best-seller list of any vendor. About 60 models as of now.
Developments
- Lots of new stuff in the background with regards to the switch article and switches in general. I'm going to officially roll out new functions later.
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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 Mon 5th Aug 2024. Featured in KBD #171.
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