Keyboard Builders' Digest / Projects
Birdie6 keyboard
u/josandi used MrZealot's ergogen to design this beautiful Birdie6 keyboard.
Published February 4, 2022
I don't know about you but I personally find this keyboard achingly beautiful.
Maybe it's the combination of the warm wooden plate with the DES profile caps in butter yellow color – with a similarly heartwrenching price tag. But more about this later.
Inspired by the Absolem, Kyria, A.Dux, Balbuzard and many other brilliant keyboards, josandi aka choochuwu designed this 36-key, MX only, hotswap only unibody angled keyboard to be used with Pro Micro compatible development boards.
My approximation of what humans might find ergonomic – choochuwu.
The halves are rotated 40° resulting in a 80° angle between them – which is on the extreme side of similar monoblock designs. However, the usability depends on the user's working environment so this might work well in certain cases. And if somebody uses MrZealot's Ergogen to design a keyboard, that's usually a good indication of conscious planning.
All the necessary files, including Ergogen config, are published in this repo:
Github repo: https://github.com/choochuwu/BirdieBoards/tree/brid/Birdie6
The board is designed to be used with a sandwich style case, the required files are included in the repository.
DES keycaps
Profile-wise, DES is something along the SA, MT3, MDA line and they are Pseudoku3's made-to-order cold cast porcelain/resin caps with MX stem. And a quite hefty price tag:
https://asymplex.bigcartel.com/product/des-alpha-sets
According to this page, 46 keys for my Azimuth would cost exactly 200 bucks. Plus shipping, custom fees, VAT. Ouch. Nevertheless, josandi seems to be most pleased with them:
These are resin cast but feel better than anything I’ve used before. It’s some kind of porcelain resin and it seriously feels premium. The profile itself really hugs your fingers in the right way – josandi.
Published on Fri 4th Feb 2022. Featured in KBD #64 (source).
Related
Dormouse
The Dormouse is a 3D printed, handwired 40% by dapperrogue (gallery & git).
Red Herring
The Red Herring by dj_edit is a split ergo 75% board similar to an Alice, but with columnar staggering.
Laptop replacement keyboard
A tented laptop replacement keyboard by kevinfrei.
Wireless solar board
A wireless keyboard that never has to be plugged in. Committed by SouthPawEngineer.