Keyboard Builders' Digest / Projects
Kleks keyboard
The Kleks is a low-pro monoblock split by Radomir Dopieralski with extreme pinky offset.
Published December 25, 2021
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This low-profile monoblock split with extreme pinky stagger and strange but cool-looking circular routing is Radomir's (aka deshipu) next keyboard project after the Kamina.
It was brought to my attention by Kristina's column at Hackaday (Keebin' with Kristina) and the project page is hosted on Hackaday too.
Ever since I've built the Kamina keyboard I have been very happy with it. I use it everyday for work and leisure, and it has improved my typing habits and lessened wrist pains. Encouraged by this, I also made some tries to use a two-part ergonomic split keyboards, such as Chocolad keyboard – but somehow I feel that I really prefer single-piece keyboards – they are easier to place on the desk. So now I want to make a keyboard that combines the advantages of the hardcore ergonomic designs, with my own preferences – deshipu.
Project page: https://hackaday.io/project/182998-kleks-keyboard
Gerbers: https://hackaday.io/project/182998-kleks-keyboard#menu-files
The keyboard doesn't simply features CircuitPython but also deshipu's uKeeb, a minimalistic USB keyboard library for CircuitPython:
I took the opportunity with this new keyboard and worked a bit on my uKeeb CircuitPython library. With the custom HID descriptors we can have an NKRO keyboard, but there is a small problem: the bitmap device that this uses won't work in BIOS or with legacy KVM devices, as those expect a BOOT device. Fortunately there is a way around that: when the host expects a BOOT device, it must send you a special message telling you that, so we can switch to that protocol when needed. The support for receiving that message was recently added to CircuitPython in version 7.1.0, so we can now add the NKRO code to the library by default – deshipu.
Published on Sat 25th Dec 2021. Featured in KBD #58 (source).
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