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GameBoard

Evgenii Vilkov shared his half-keyboard GameBoard, optimized for gaming.

KBD.news
Published September 6, 2023
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After many split keyboards (Stront, Pica40, Smol), Evgenii Vilkov aka zzeneg shared a gaming board, aptly named the GameBoard.

Hey everyone, here's my latest design - half-keyboard optimized for gaming purposes – zzeneg.

While zzeneg likes his 38-key Stront for typing, it's just not enough for many games, at least one half of it. According to the author, WASD is in the wrong place so you either need to change settings in every game or create a separate layer. Second, many games may require to press mods or hold other keys so you have to avoid layer-taps and mod-taps, and in some cases you just need more hotkeys. So the GameBoard is a dedicated gamepad to fix all these issues while keeping zzeneg's current ergo layout, or at least something similar.

Specs

  • 31 MX or KS-33/27 switches
  • 5-way switch
  • 3 push buttons
  • per-key LEDs
  • Waveshare RP2040 Zero MCU
  • 3D printed case

The author took a regular 3x5+3 design with WASD in the center, added inner index column (usually games use these hotkeys by default), second pinky column and an extra thumb for other rarely used keys, and finished it with a 5-way switch to replace arrows and 3 push buttons just to fill the matrix.

Pic:

Build: On the photos you can see KS-33 brown switches, black resin case and XVX keycaps. The 5-way knob is a shortened version of Sadek Baroudi's design.

Resources

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Published on Wed 6th Sep 2023. Featured in KBD #134 (source).

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