Keyboard Builders' Digest / Projects
HiveMind
The 47-key handwired HiveMind by Protieusz has an ambidextrous numpad in the middle.
Published March 25, 2023
Protieusz's HiveMind, a handwired pseudosplit keyboard, has a numpad inpired by Cerbekos's Tenalice combined with somepin's La Lettre.
The name HiveMind was used because the center cluster looks a little alienish – Protieusz.
Specs
- 47 keys, handwired
- QAZ-ish layout
- Waveshare RP2040-Zero development board
- 3D printed case (STLs)
- fits a 60% travel case
I asked the author, who has been using the HiveMind as his daily driver for a couple of weeks in without any issues, about his background in the hobby, inspirations, lessons learned, etc.
Background
Protieusz worked as an IT QA for hospital apps in a hospital, became interested in mechanical keyboards, but while checking out some prebuilt keyboards he felt that the layout and design was not good enough.
The rabbit hole started on April last year. My first mechanical keeb that needed soldering was the MechWild BDE Rev 2. Then fast forward around Jan 2023 I started to design and handwire my first keeb since things are getting expensive and I can have any layout I want with handwiring.
The HiveMind layout came to be in a dream. It was a combo of Cerbekos’s Tenalice and somepin’s La Lettre layout.
I worked with numbers a lot and sometimes it is inconvenient to type numbers from layers. I made it the HiveMind so that it is both compact and functional. I also cut off all the necessary modifiers and group them at the center with the number clusters.
Designing the case was a real challenge. Protieusz learned most the skill sets from YouTube and by asking around on Discord.
At the time I didn’t know about offset function in Fusion360 so I had to manually trace out the edges of the pre generated switch plate in order to get a case frame. It took a lot of time to get it right. First prototype case was a weird pill shaped keyboard. I had to “visualize” it without any 3d printing on how the typing ergonomic will be. Then after the pill shape failure, I reshaped the HiveMind into the current form. Then only recently I learned about offsets from kbd.news.
According to the author, the lessons learned from designing keyboards are:
The torture and the pain of using the keyboard layout website to painfully rotate each key to a close to perfect 45 degrees angle is worth it in the end because you get the layout you wanted. At the end of the day always strive to absorb and learn. Never give up because the results are very rewarding.
Resources
More photos and STLs on Github:Published on Sat 25th Mar 2023. Featured in KBD #117 (source).
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