Keyboard Builders' Digest / Projects
X-2: a Lumberjack-style ortho
A Lumberjack-inspired ARM-powered 5x12 ortho by Richard Goulter, compatible with the GH-60 case.
Published January 15, 2022
I really liked the look of peej's Lumberjack keyboard. One downside to it is that DIP microcontrollers are relatively weak. Development boards are a spiritual-successor to DIP microcontrollers, so I wanted to adapt the striking Lumberjack design to a more powerful devboard. With a more powerful devboard, you can include more features that QMK firmware allows – richardgoulter.
Design goals:
- Using STM32 dev board. (ARM-powered).
- Adapt the Lumberjack design.
- Exposed, "show the components" style.
- Fits in tray-mount GH60 case.
- (Relatively) easy to solder.
The board can be assembled with either a Bluepill devboard, or a WeAct Studio MiniF4 "Blackpill". The PCB supports either MX or Choc switches. (Hot-swapping can be achieved using PCB rivets.)
The board also has 4 RGB LEDs, which was intended to be used as status indicators (to indicate which layer is active, etc.), but currently is used for the knight-rider effect.
Gerbers and lasercutting assets can be found at:
https://github.com/rgoulter/keyboard-labs/releases/tag/x2-rev2021.1
(With sources to generate these made available in the main repo.)
After using it as his main keyboard for a few weeks, here are some of the designer's remarks:
- Compared to the 4x12-ish BM40, the number row is useful to have for gaming; and useful for one-handed number input for e.g. Windows PIN sign-in. (Although it's not difficult to have a one-hand-able numpad layer on a 4x12).
- The BM40's per-key RGB is useful to have for feedback of "my keyboard is plugged in", if you have an effect which reacts to keypresses. Although, since you don't really look down while using the keyboard, per-key RGBs aren't really missed.
- The PCB could have been designed with per-key RGB lighting; but the author didn't felt it were in the spirit of the exposed design which presents almost all the components in the middle.
Published on Sat 15th Jan 2022. Featured in KBD #61 (source).
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