Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial
Behind the scenes #178
Keyboard projects, KBDcraft GIVEAWAY!, quick news, in the mailbox, meetups, new vendors and discount codes!
Published November 8, 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.
PSA: I'm a bit behind – the cut-off date for the news below was last weekend, in case you’re wondering why some noteworthy projects aren't covered. No panic, they're in the pipeline!
Some posts worth sharing
- You loved this last month, so here we go again: here are October's top picks covering all the community-favorite mechanical switches – based on real sales data provided by vendors and manufacturers.
- Review: The full-resin Akko YU01 keyboard elevates RGB lighting to a whole new level as the case acts as a giant diffuser. 65%, hot-swappable, wireless, featuring Akko Piano switches and ASA keycaps.
Let me interrupt the list of projects with a quick giveaway:
KBDcraft Israfel Giveaway
OK, I'm officially burned out from running overly large giveaways with a hundred of prizes and dozens of shops involved, however, I'm okay with doing one small giveaway every now and then.
This week KBDcraft's Boyu offered you one of his Israfel kits – this is a real LEGO-compatible angled spit, a 50% sized one after the smaller Lilin macropad/numpad.
Just received a review unit, will try to write about it next week.
If you'd like to win one,
- comment something below the associated tweet
- or if you hate Musk, just drop me an email with the subject israfel giveaway and maybe some nice words.
- Edit: include your country too (no need to resend the email if you were one of the early birds).
- Deadline: Nov
1518, 10:00 GMT.
Back to the projects! :)
- The Kolossus is a sub-40% monoblock split by Protieusz – with trackball (what else? :) and encoder.
- A QAZ-like monoblock split: Clops by Calvin0563 – with on-board RP2040 and optional encoders.
- LostPistachio's Limbo is a relatively slim Dactyl-like keyboard with vertical thumb keys.
- Phasmic is a magnetic framework to build modular keyboards – shared by Tan Guan Hong.
- Rob Quinn made a super-cute ortho "TKL", the aptly named Ortho TKL. :)
- Smallcat is a 26-key split keyboard by Matt Petiteau, featuring the author's cat, Lila.
- The 5x12 ortholinear Krtkus 62 is a low-profile keyboard open sourced by Jan Bláha.
- This macropad, about the size of a credit card, was shared by Ziddy Makes.
In other news
- Velvet V3 released. I love the redesigned case. It's open source by the way, so a dedicated post is imminent, but a review unit is on the way too. Expect an in-depth write-up soon.
- The ScottoChoczard is the Choc-spaced low-pro version of Joe's ScottoHazard. Handwired, wireless, with fancy momentary switches on the "wings".
- Sasha Karmanov (Ak66666) made some ALPS switch support brackets for the ThumbsUp! v.5.
TIPS
- Clean nice!view customization by Oleksandr Vasyliev aka infely.
I've spent time developing practical customization for the nice!view displays, focusing on what truly matters. No unnecessary features, no input lag - just a clean layout provides everything when you need it at a quick glance. Enjoy! – infely.
- Reducing key travel with 3D printing. Fellow redditor jmding made a thing. STL here.
- 2+1 typing games: In Blue Smoke's Drak(c)ula you type-read Bram Stoker's horror novel Dracula. And yazeenq's Typing Ninja is a fast-paced word-slashing typing game. Both are in the free demo phase. Bonus: Another WIP typing game by Joshua318 – the more you type the more cats show up and give you love.
Closed-source, WIP, etc.
- dynam1keNL is working on various sets of low-pro keycaps for Kailh's ultra low profile PG1316S switches. CAD models soon.
- Koenigspiel is working on a brutalist split:
I got the urge to design a new board and have really been into that kind of brutalist, industrial, military, rugged, Dune kind of aesthetic. I wanted to make it as thin and portable as possible using MX switches.
- Liaison is a WIP split by dohn-joh, with his hallmark lever thumb keys. Repo coming soon.
- BK-1 by asagilmore – preview of another ultra-low PG1316S split. More details soon.
- Pinya is workin on a foldable prototype with Kailh's ultra-low PG1316s switches too.
- Split62 by mhzizzi. A low-pro1plit created via Ergogen.
- Ulti77 by TheGuyWhoCodes.
Keyboard art
- Veddermandenis built this retro battlestation out of Lego pieces. Check out the post for many more photos with all the little details.
- B&W wood? HueRifficCaps did something like that.
These are made from lamitated died and bleached wood veneers. Oil finish hasned cured yet… they become a semi gloss hard surface.
On the switch compilation
Firstly, there are three belated contributors, I'll try to update the post (and recalculate/regenerate everything…) this weekend.
Secondly, I'm glad you love these switch articles (at least based on pageviews and reddit comments), because it takes a lot of my time to put them together.
In fact, I was curious how much exactly, so I tried to time all the work done this week. It's pretty hard to come up with an exact number because the work extended over several days, with numerous interruptions: starting from sending reminders to the contributors, asking for clarification in some cases, adding missing switches to the database, sniffing for specs, looking for photos, filling up the data tables with specs, top lists and offers of contributors, coding and tweaking the sorting algorithm, formatting, publishing, follow-up, etc.
All in all, it turned out that it took me somewhere between 20-30 hours to put this article together. I must have gone mad…
- 20 hours is the more conservative estimate, excluding development and coding, that I can reuse next month.
- 30 hours is closer to the effective time I spend with compiling this article.
I'm not sure if it makes sense to keep putting so much time into writing these posts, so please keep commenting and sharing to let the visitor stats speak for themselves. ;)
In the mailbox
After offering his new split Israfel for the giveaway, Boyu sent me a review unit too, and it arrived yesterday. It looks really cool, but I have yet to build it. I'm looking forward to the review process, however, it feels a bit odd: I review most keyboards at work while, well, working in the office. Playing with LEGO at the workplace might seem a bit excessive though. :)
I also received a novel keycap puller from Kemove – to remove 4 caps at one go. The tool is clever and well built, but it's not available yet. In addition, I have yet to test it on various setups. It works great for Kemove's own boards with Cherry keycaps for sure. Less so with the monster KBDcraft Lilith I built earlier and had at hand, so the key seems to be: how tightly the keycaps fit on the switches. I will test many more keycap profiles and get back to you with a thorough review.
Donations
- No new donors this time.
- 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
Upcoming
- KeebLife mini, November 9, Los Angeles, CA, US
Recently added
The Berlin meetups, run by soduko and zitres, are held monthly, I've added the next three events.
- Berlin Mechanical Keyboards & Input Devices Meetup, November 25, Berlin, Germany
- Berlin Mechanical Keyboards & Input Devices Meetup, January 27, 2025, Berlin, Germany
- Berlin Mechanical Keyboards & Input Devices Meetup, February 24, 2025, Berlin, Germany
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 162 keyboard shops! And do not hesitate to report any issues.
New shops and updates to the database of keyboard vendors this past two weeks:
- MonacoKeys offered you a 5% discount. Thanks Michael! Use the KBDNEWS coupon code as usual. (Actually, there was a one-time coupon in place already, but it's now valid for everything except keyboard permanently.)
- PandaKB added.
- I have removed keyboardco's coupon. Thanks for reporting it, Zak. I'm pretty sure there are more inactive coupons, give me some time to go through them.
Deals
I was asked to share some deals with you, so here they go:
- Ghostly Good Deals on Mech Keyboards This Halloween by Apos. With large discounts on various WhiteFox Eclipse cases, keycaps and switches.
- MoeeTech still has the cool free umbrella offer. But it's also worth checking out their Glitter65. ;)
- Yuzu Giveaway: 3 Yuzu custom keycap sets will be given away in November.
Developments
I've been working a lot on the switch database and supporting scripts. Standardization/normalization of the sales data and rankings continued, as a plan B for an aggregated top list while data provision from contributors is incomplete. Starting with the ideas coming from Pupsino and ProfNugget, I do think I managed to create a balanced sorting method, mitigating lots of issues and taking into account various peculiarities of the very heterogeneous data sets.
That said, I'm pretty sure the algorithm will be tweaked further, rearranging the ranking.
Coming up next: implementing some missing but important features like filtering, ordering switches, etc.
---
That's all for today. Thanks for checking by. As always: Keep learning and building!
Until next time,
Tamás
Published on Fri 8th Nov 2024. Featured in KBD #178.
Related
Behind the Scenes of Issue 86
Working on my first video, meetup database update, new honorary copyeditor, giveaway, etc.
Behind the Scenes of Issue 41
Developments, Reddit cake day inventory, Issue 40 follow-up, to-do list, etc
Behind the Scenes of Issue 106
Giveaway follow-up, advent calendar, new discount, updates, etc.
Behind the scenes #157
Keyboard projects, quick news, in the mailbox, meetups, new vendors and discount codes!
Behind the scenes #170
Keyboard projects, quick news, in the mailbox, meetups, new vendors and discount codes!