Behind the Scenes of Issue 100

Quick news, 100 issues, new vendors and discounts, new meetups, new donors.

Hey y'all,

Welcome back for another edition of Keyboard Builders' Digest (this time Issue #100), a weekly roundup of this DIY keyboard focused newsletter and blog from Tamas Dovenyi – that's me. If you are new to this, you can read how this started out and what this is all about nowadays. If you like what you see, you can subscribe to the newsletter (free) and donate some bucks to keep this otherwise free and ad-free project alive.

---

Quick news

• ThereminGoat launched a series(?) on Drop, starting with a general intro to switches.
• Akko came out with a pretty unique spring mount kit: the SPR67.
• MTNU October update by Matt3o.
• LoyalPotato updated the Yggdrasil repo with two cases (related post).
• Värdera rectangular Choc version available both on Thingiverse and Printables – by braindefender.
• Ergomech store turned 2.

The first 100 issues

I know I should have prepared with something special for this historic issue, but I wouldn't have had time for it even if I haven't fought with covid…

Anyway, next month this project will turn 2 so that will be another opportunity to celebrate.

Vendor database

• Keebfront added, and Andy offered you a 5% discount (coupon code: KBDNEWS).
• Candykeys offered you a somewhat mysterious discount. It's about 3% but it depends on the actual product I guess and may not even work for everything. Check it out!
• Digital Carpentry, Keeb Concrete, Wylderbuilds added.

Meetup database

• Mintlodica × Shopify Los Angeles Meet-up (Nov 5) added.
• New York City Meetup (Dec 10) added.
• Iowa meetup (March 4) updated with venue.
• and ofc I missed The Grand Lason by Zion Studios PH – this tiny event with 2,100 attendees. :D

As always, this meetup database is both a calendar and an archive so feel free to send me upcoming events or even ones from the recent past to make this collection as comprehensive as possible.

Donors

• New donations from Paul Kischlat and Capsule Deluxe (thanks Caroline!).
• A new recurring donor: thanks Arto Olli!

---

That's all for today. Thanks for reading.

Feel free to comment in this issue's r/mk thread, and as always: keep learning and building.

Cheers, Tamás

PSA: Issue #100 postponed

I contracted covid and have to take a break. Issue #100 postponed to next week.

So I contracted covid and have to take a longer break.

Issue #100 will be published next week. Hopefully.

Won't be able to answer emails and PMs either.

If you wanna help, feel free to tag me on Twitter (@KbdNews) and Reddit (u/dovenyi) in comments below promising projects so I don't miss anything in the meantime.

Thanks.

Klein keyboard

A feature-rich split design by noSNK supporting Pro Micro and XIAO footprints: Klein.

Named after the German mathematician Christian Felix Klein, this Klein is a split keyboard by noSNK aka Shashank, supporting controllers with both Pro Micro and Seeed XIAO footprints.

My first custom keyboard design Klein, with bluetooth, encoder, touchpad, oled, buzzer and haptics – noSNK.

Features

• Column staggered
• Bluetooth compatible with power switch
• Seeed Studio XIAO / Pro Micro (nice!nano, KB2040, etc.) compatible
• Hotswap MX and Choc support
• Trackpad support with FPC/FFC connector + ribbon cable and direct wiring
• SMD and through hole diode footprint

Resources

• GitHub repo.
• Firmware.
• The project on hackster.io.

The PCB and assembly was sponsered by Seeed Fusion PCBA (coupon).

Kastenwagen 1840

Alex Ronke's Kastenwagen 1840 & Kastenwagen 48 are now open source.

The Kastenwagen 1840, designed and shared by Alex Ronke aka NoPunIn10Did, is a 40% board with a 13.75u long alpha block, exploded arrow keys, LED layer indicators, and a mini-numpad. The 48 replaces the numpad with a macro column.

The Kastenwagen 48 is a similar keyboard that replaces the mini-numpad with a small macro column.

Last year, I ran a limited prototype run for two related keyboards: the Kastenwagen 1840 and the Kastenwagen 48. This was a fun board to design and build, but apart from a handful of dedicated users, it has been largely forgotten – NoPunIn10Did.

Part of this, the author suspects, is that the design of the main alpha portion of the board was specifically made with non-US alphas in mind (particularly German or Nordic). The 11 alpha columns in the Q and A rows leave enough space for the additional non-English letters like Ü, Ö, Ä, Å, Ø, and Æ.

The current design of the board assumes an Elite C as its microcontroller / daughterboard (NOT a Pro Micro).

Resources

• GitHub repo (with PCB and plate): https://github.com/nopunin10did/kastenwagen
• An acrylic case was available at digital-carpentry.com (source of the photo above).
• Prototype renders on imgur.

Hotreus62

Hotreus62 was shared by leo_beekeeb – a 60% hotswappable keyboard that supports both low-profile Choc and MX switches.

According to leo_beekeeb, the Hotreus62 was inspired by two keyboards: Atreus62 and Lily58 Pro.

Features

• With an Atreus62 layout, Hotreus62 has enough keys for having a number row.
• Similarly to the design approach of Lily58 Pro, Hotreus62 supports both Low Profile Kailh Choc or MX hotswap sockets.
• The overall keyboard height is reduced, with the breakout board placed on top of the main PCB.

Resources

The project is 100% open source. The files (PCB, BOM, case and firmware) are available at:

https://github.com/beekeeb/hotreus62

More photo: https://showcase.beekeeb.com/hotreus62-hotswap/

Atreus52

The open-source Atreus52 by hainguyenac comes with a little twist.

The Atreus52, a derivative of the classic Atreus design, has been open-sourced by ergomech.store's hainguyenac.

It features an extra outer column, and the PCB design is based on the author's RP2040 Bento controller, so check out that post too.

The Atreus52 is a re-design of the famous Atreus, it's my first ever ergonomic keyboard so I'm quite fond of it, though the lack of outer columns eventually drove me away from it, now that I can design my own version of it, I've made my perfect Atreus – hainguyenac.

Resources

• https://github.com/ergomechstore/Atreus52

primpkeeb

A 3D-printed, handwired keyboard by aionskull: the primpkeeb.

Calvin Nemo aka RobotTelevision/aionskull published some files of his primpkeeb, a 3D-printed, handwired board with a Pi Pico devboard.

The name is derived from: "Printable Modular Pico Pi Keyboard".

The design is modular, not reconfigurable. Many modular designs are also reconfigurable, but they are not the same. There are 3 different printed 'blocks' which you can arrange in a ton of ways to get a custom layout that works for you – aionskull.

Pick a layout, connect it together and solder up the keyboard matrix to the Pico pins.

Then bolt the whole thing to a piece of wood or polycarbonate.

Resources

More photos in the original post on r/mk.

GitHub repo: https://github.com/RobotTelevision/primpkeeb

Tinkercad source so you can easily modify the design.

Rock On v3

Rock On v3 by Sadek Baroudi. With case STLs.

Sadek Baroudi (fingerpunch.xyz) keeps tweaking his Rock On design – compare it to this one from earlier this year. V3 now supports a center trackball or trackpad.

Features

• Elite-C footprint (but no AVR supported)
• Trackball support (PMW3360)
• Cirque trackpad support
• Per key RGB (SK6812 mini-e)
• MX and Choc v1 hotswap
• 3 keys at the bottom for mouse clicks
• Support for up to 3 rotary encoders, one under each palm, and one in the center of the 3 bottom keys
• Wireless support (but you lose support for the center rotary encoder)
• QMK and ZMK firmware

Case STLs

While the project isn't open source, the case STLs are available at:

https://github.com/sadekbaroudi/fingerpunch/tree/master/keyboards/rock-on/cases/stl/v3

RominRonin and his symmetric layouts

In this interview I asked RominRonin about the katana layout, his Katana60 PCBs, the upcoming Tsuka60, and a lot more!

In this series I ask revered members of the community. Recent interviews: Pekaso, Khawar Ahmed and Sadnan from the Bangladeshi community and ergohaven's Evgeny.

This time we talked with Baris Tosun aka RominRonin (Github), who is a web developer living in Austria, and the designer of various symmetric row-staggered layouts like the Katana.

I stumbled upon his name in 2018 on Geekhack and have identified it with these symmetric layouts since then. So I was pleasantly surprised to see his comment on reddit after referencing his work in the Infernum post.

During this interview I discovered that he is not only a very nice guy, but also that we have a lot in common. Still, wrapping up this piece took almost two months because in the meantime he had a baby boy (congrats!), our chat at some point seemed like I became the interviewee :D, and just before the finish line I contracted covid…

Anyway, ladies and gents, here is the excerpt of our conversation with rominronin about his original Katana, the Katana60 PCBs, the upcoming Tsuka60, and a lot more!

---

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

My name is Baris Tosun. I’m a web developer, specializing in Drupal. I work at blinker.digital in Austria.

When I see a katana layout, your name comes immediately to mind. But have we crossed paths before? I dipped my toes into customs and splits in 2018. Maybe around those times?

The name rings a bell, but I can’t remember, I’m from London originally, but since I’ve been in the community, I’ve been Austria based.

So an Englishman in Austria? That sounds interesting. Is there a romantic plot twist or was this a rather boring professional/business decision?

Romantic plot twist, lol. Yeah I moved here to avoid a long distance relationship with my Austrian girlfriend. I’d say it worked out since we’re married and have kids now!

Aah, I knew it! :D Congrats. How can she tolerate your keyboard obsession?

It’s a novelty that she can tease me about. ;) I have a hobbies budget, so long as I don’t venture too far outside of that, she doesn’t care.

Back in 2018 when I stumbled upon the katana layout your natural habitat seemed to be geekhack. In what communities are you active now?

I’ve been a member of GH, DT and r/MK since at least 2015, nowadays I browse r/MK mostly, since the birth of my daughter I have had much less time for keyboards in general. Unfortunately.

I am active on discord, there is a new Katana60 forum thread on the CandyKeys server. I’m idling on various other servers too, keyboard and non-keyboard related.

I’m also planning to record some music related spoken content – an audio podcast, but the birth of my second child is imminent, so it won’t be soon!

Btw, how and when did you get involved in the mechanical keyboard hobby? Given the explosion during the lockdown we both belong to a minority of living fossils in the scene, but I know you started much earlier than me.

I have been interested in alternative input devices for a long time before I entered the mechanical keyboards community.

Some time around 2015 I joined geekhack. Seeing what others had done with mechanical keyboards inspired me to create a ‘fixed’ M-SNEK (Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4K), I created a prototype called the katana (more photos and info).

Around the same time I discovered r/mk and Deskthority, today’s communities are built upon the great work done by users of those forums (at least in the English speaking world) – and we have a lot to thank them for.

Back to the story – my prototype worked wonderfully, but it too was a compromise, and like others in the community, I wanted to build my own PCB. So I started learning KiCAD.

While developing the next version I realized I could fit the layout in a meaningful way into a standard, 60% case. I felt that prices in the community were too high to be accessible, so I set myself the target of compatibility with standard keysets. That project took my focus and eventually became the Katana60.

I have to give a big shoutout to David at CandyKeys, who I met at a meetup in Vienna. He agreed to produce the PCB and stock it on his site [feel free to use the KBDNEWS discount code]. Without his support the Katana60 would be nothing more than another prototype on my desk.

So in summary, the Katana60 layout came out of the desire to fix the asymmetry of the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000.

Do you have some stats about the Katana60 PCB? How many of them could be out there?

We produced 2 rounds of 100x boards, I wish there were more, but compared to boards like the Planck, the Katana60 just wasn’t that popular.

I have also gifted a very small number of prototypes – that’s really it.

From ergo point of view, especially ulnar deviation, the katana layout seems to make more sense than an ortho keyboard or the classic horizontally staggered one. Did you come up with your arrangement by yourself, or were there other similar projects out there serving as inspiration?

Again, my inspiration all along was the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. I really felt the right hand side was perfect, so even when I tried technically 'more ergonomical' layouts like the ergodox, atreus, even the dactyl, asked myself how it was possible that a flatter, row staggered layout could feel as comfortable (in some cases, more comfortable) than something that follows the shape of the hand more carefully.

The truth is that ergonomics is about more than just fitting the shape of your hand. Like it or not, people find comfort in standard layout keyboards. But the point is that we all sit at our desks in a different way. The height of the desk, the angle of our forearms, our posture, the distance to the keyboard itself (and the time we spend using keyboards) all vary from person to person.

The MSNEK 4K is designed with the classic 'limbs at 90 degrees, monitor top in line with the eyes' seating posture in mind. The Katana60 follows the same cue, and it is most comfortable in that posture.

I tried prototyping 40% variants, but they were not as comfortable. All of a sudden, the angle between your two forearms becomes acuter. The distance between the left and right sides of a Katana60 serves a secondary function of keeping your hands slightly further apart, maintaining that comfortable typing angle.

I came to these conclusions with a combination of obsessive study of the MSNEK 4K and any other keyboard I got a hold of, and a hell of a lot of trial and error. I racked up a lot of prototypes, sometimes just for fun, but mostly to form a basis of comparison.

Only later I found that the idea was not unique at all. Fellow Geekhack user Bpiphany created the Blue Pill board (2015), and there was the Japanese MicroTron (2007). I tried to get my hands on one, but no luck!

[ed: for similar layouts see also my Reuters (1985) and Takeshi Nishio's contemporary Jones and Nora.]

Commercial exploration of the ergonomic keyboard space is nothing new, but the pressure to sell such boards wasn't met by the demand in them. The strength of our community is that it brings together people with the passion to develop practical solutions with those who have a need for them.

What about the Japanese references like ronin, katana and tsuka?

I started karate around 95/96 and have been interested in the psychological aspect of combat and sports in general. I read a number of related books which impacted me greatly. One of these books was called Hagakure – from Wikipedia:

“Written during a time when there was no officially sanctioned samurai fighting, the book grapples with the dilemma of maintaining a warrior class in the absence of war and reflects the author's nostalgia for a world that had disappeared before he was born.”

This fantasy of ronin – samurai with no master – roaming the land dedicated to personal betterment and pushing themselves to be the best they can be; this inspired me greatly and inspired the handle rominronin.

The Katana name fit since it was the tool of the samurai, a tool which they might have trained with religiously, with the aim of reaching technical perfection.

For me, buying a mechanical keyboard is the first step, you should then invest time in understanding your patterns of use, and adapting some known layers to fit your needs, in a repeating pattern of improvement.

And how does your setup look like these days? Which keyboard/switches/caps – and layout – do you daily drive or prefer in general?

OK, so across all my boards I use the Colemak Mod DH layout, I’ve tried Dvorak and Vanilla Colemak too, but this is the layout that works best for me.

In the office I use a Katana60, with GMK Pulse. The switches are Gateron Black Inks, unlubed and the whole thing is housed in a black KBDFans 5 Degree case.

I'm lucky enough to have a home studio for music production, which is where I use a beige HMKB 75 with GMK 9009 caps on a set of Novelkeys Silks (milkshake/recoloured yellows).

Finally, I have a home office space (apart from the studio room), where I switch between my remaining boards. Until recently I was using my black ISO GMMK Pro with Geekark 9009, but today I just finished my custom black HMKB 60, which contains a special, one-off, RGB Tsuka prototype. This one has Zealio V1 Redux switches, for the ultimate ergoclear experience.

[Check out this imgur gallery for more photos.]

Were you aware of the Infernum project or similar ones with katana(ish) layouts?

I wasn’t aware of the Infernum project, but I’ve generally been supportive of katana-like layouts when I’ve seen them. The more people in the community who use them, the easier it will be to convince keycap designers to support the odd keycaps that they require.

That has been my main frustration with the Katana60; getting a keyset that supports it 100%, with the right profile on each row can be expensive (of course if you can keep it really cheap by ignoring the profile or using uniform profile keysets).

The Tsuka60 has better support and is aesthetically the better of the two imo. That project has stalled since I became a father. Having a mortgage and now a second child has diverted my attention away from these projects.

Right now though, I have some spare time again to work on the Tsuka60, in fact I’m currently working on a hot swappable version of both that and the Katana60. Follow the GH thread for updates.

One final thing that I’d like to include is that fluxlabs created a split PCB called the Zplit which was also a Katana60 type layout.

I own two of them and even created a custom case based on my original vision of an improved MSNEK 4K clone. It’s a great feeling board, although there are still some improvements I’d like to make. If anyone wants to support me by designing a proper unibody case for it and even helping to organise a group buy, I’d be interested in talking!

---

After answering my questions, RominRonin told me that this whole interviewing process has got him looking at what he have achieved and that he doesn’t want the Tsuka60 project to stall any longer. He started speaking with CandyKeys again, getting the ball rolling on the Tsuka60 and some new hotswap versions of Katana60. If you are interested, you can find him on the CandyKeys discord server, on the Katana60 thread.

RP2040 Bento

The RP2040 Bento, a relatively low profile breakout board without a USB connector, has been open-sourced by hainguyenac.

In August this year, ergomech.store's hainguyenac teased his RP2040 Bento breakout board. After manufacturing and testing some prototypes, the author shared the source files.

With regards to its footprint, the Bento is resembling the RP2040 Stamp at first sight, but the similarities pretty much end there:

I took the inspiration from the rp2040-stamp. Other than being very similar in footprint, it has little similarities (probably none, not even the pinout). I designed it because I want to offer my keyboard designs with this being the brain, and if I want to do that, I'll have to be able to make my own breakout boards – hainguyenac.

The board doesn't have an onboard USB port, which should be designed as part of the carrier board.

The lack of the USB connector, combined with castellated pads, makes the Bento much thinner than the usual Pro Micro stack.

Features

• The Bento is a breakout board with castellated pad to be solder on a carrier board.
• The USB port can either be placed on the carrier board or can be used with a breakout USB C board.
• The Bento stays flat on the board so it's great for low-profile boards.
• Since it can be soldered with castellated pad, it can be used with a PnP machine, allowing mid-scale manufacturing of keyboards.

Resources

The KiCad and Gerber files are available in the GitHub repo (tested with JLCPCB service (coupon) with success):

https://github.com/ergomechstore/rp2040-bento

Frood RP2040

Frood RP2040 is an open-source controller by 42keebs. A Pro Micro compatible breakout board with an RP2040.

Petr Sedlacek aka piit79 of 42keebs.eu published his Frood, a Pro Micro compatible controller sporting an RP2040. (It was brought to my attention by _GEIST_ and his gorgeous Charybdis Nano build.)

The Frood is a high-performance and affordable Pro Micro drop-in replacement based on a Raspberry Pi RP2040. It is physically and electrically compatible with Elite-C/nice!nano as much as possible – piit79.

It follows the SparkFun Pro Micro RP2040 pinout with 5 more pins (GPIO12-GPIO16) added along the bottom edge (like on the Elite-C), and USB data lines broken out in the top corners (like nice!nano).

Features

• Powerful dual-core Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU
• 2 MB on-board QSPI flash memory
• Only 3.2 mm thick thanks to a mid-mounted USB-C socket
• 500 mA linear regulator and resettable fuse
• Combined Pro Micro / Elite-C / nice!nano / SparkFun Pro Micro RP2040 compatible pinout
• 5 more I/O pins (GPIO12-GPIO16) added along the bottom edge
• 23 available digital pins for a maximum of 11x12 = 132 switches (or is it 506? ;))
• 4 pins configurable as analogue inputs
• USB D+/D- broken out for use with an external USB socket/daughterboard
• USB power sensing on GPIO19 for split keyboard side detection
• UF2 bootloader for drag & drop programming with no extra software required
• Orange indicator LED on pin GPIO17

Btw, the project is at Rev5(!), although only the second working version as far as I can see.

EDIT

Pete reached out to me with the reasons for this:

The project is now at Rev5, which unfortunately is indeed only the second working revision. While I now know my way around KiCad pretty well, I'm in no way a very experienced electronics designer, and that fact manifested itself in the prototyping process of the Frood – Pete.

A quick devlog in the designer's own words:

1. Frood Rev1 had a top-mounted USB-C socket (as I couldn't find a suitable in-stock mid-mounted USB-C socket in JLCPCB's inventory back then), but it didn't work at all due to a simple mistake of the crystal having a 2-pin schematic symbol, but a 4-pin footprint (which resulted in the crystal pins being mapped to footprint pins 1 and 2, when the correct pins are 1 and 3 /2 and 4 are ground/)
2. Rev2 wasn't manufactured as I quickly made another iteration
3. Rev3 had a mid-mounted USB-C socket, but to get it to sit flush with the bottom of the PCB, a 1 mm PCB was chosen. This seemed to work just fine. This revision initially looked good as it started up in the UF2 bootloader mode upon connecting. However, it would go completely silent after flashing. Another closer look at the flash memory datasheet uncovered another stupid mistake – the chip was for 1.8-2.6 V power supply range (while RP2040 uses 3.3 V). So flashing the module destroyed the flash chip…
4. Rev4 fixed this issue by selecting a smaller 2 MB flash chip, but with a proper power supply range this time. And to my great relief, it ended up working! Some JLCPCB quality issues were uncovered later – the soldering of the USB-C socket wasn't very good on some modules and the USB-C socket could easily detach from the PCB :/ Fortunately not too many modules were affected, and those were of course promptly replaced
5. Rev5 is just a minor revision with added BOOT/RESET pads on the bottom of the PCB (in case the buttons are not accessible, like when the module is mounted upside down - which is in most cases) and a user LED was added on a free internal GPIO pin. Fortunately nothing was broken in the process :)

Rev5 is now live in the shop in no less than four (4) different colors – black, white, purple and yellow.

The Frood now also has official CircuitPython support.

Resources

• GitHub repo.
• Product page.

65% silicone dampener mold

A 3D printable mold by dezcompiler for making silicone PCB dampeners for 65% keyboards.

Chris_KZ aka dezcompiler published his two-part design of a 3D printed mold for 65% mechanical keyboards that can be used to create a silicone dampener that goes between the PCB and the plate.

Created a 3D printable mold that can be used to make silicon PCB dampener for 65% keyboards – dezcompiler.

The mold is split into two parts so it can be printed in the author's Ender 3. The mating edges of the two parts might require some cleanup. Tape the bottom of the seam with packing tape to prevent the silicon from leaking out. It also helps to tape the mold to a hard surface.

Chris used double sided tape and some MDF, and about 40g silicone.

The mold does not need much silicone (I think it took around 40g all together). I used a basting syringe to get the silicon into the mold. This helped to get the silicone in all the small spaces – dezcompiler.

Resources

The STL files can be found here:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5584494

Didaktik Gama

A Czechoslovakian Didaktik Gama spotted by themiracy.

One of the many Eastern European ZX-Spectrum clones?

Forty keys and a lot of layers. As seen in the National Museum of the Czech Republic, in Prague – themiracy.

As Dizi1 points out, this was made by Didaktik Skalica (Skalica is a city now in Slovakia). Both the diagram at the bottom and the instructions are in Slovak.