Long time dream
My journey to this keyboard began with a birthday gift. I had got a Microsoft
Sculpt Comfort keyboard and finally learned the proper 10 finger typing method.
Then I got into spacemacs and fell in love with the idea of using Spacebar as
a leader key. And as a newly adopted emacs user I began using Ctrl and Alt
heavily. Reaching for Ctrl required unnatural wrist movement and I got to know
that the solution is to remap Caps as Ctrl. I was using this hack for a
while until I learned a better idea - to remap LCtrl with LAlt. That’s when
I started looking for the keyboards with a shorter Spacebar, so that LCtrl
would be easily reachable by the left thumb. Eventually I stumbled upon a world
of DIY keyboards and started dreaming about Ergodox. It was too pricey and the
layout was not that good, so I decided to build my own keeb. I had a rough
understanding of what I was aiming for - a handwired split keyboard with an
orthogonal layout and a thumb cluster. I started ordering the parts - switches
and caps. When the switches were delivered, I started to design a layout for my
keyboard which fits my hands perfectly.
| Name | Qty | Price, $ |
|---|---|---|
| Diodes 1n4148 | 100 | 0.78 |
| Keys Gateron Brown | 50 | 21.00 |
| Keys Gateron Red | 10 | |
| Keys Gateron Other | 5 | |
| Keycaps PBT DSA | 65 | 17.90 |
| Atmega32u4 | 1 | 2.88 |
| Atmega32u4 | 1 | 3.22 |
| Wires | 1 set | 2.2 |
| 3.5mm plug | 2 | 0.9 |
| 3.5mm cable | 1 | 1.58 |
| encoder | 5 | 1.78 |
| knob | 10 | 1.40 |
| petg filament 1kg | 1 | 30 |
| petg leftover | -24 | |
| soldering paste | 1 | 2.29 |
| soldering wire 100g | 1 | 11 |
| soldering wire left | -10 | |
| tent screws | 8 | |
| plastidip | 1 | |
| tent fixing nuts | 4 | |
| tent nuts M5 | 4 | |
| total | 62.93 |
Designing the layout
I took a sheet of cardboard and draped it with a masking tape, so that the glue side was up. Then I placed my relaxed wrist on the board and marked where the fingertips are. These points defined the home row of the layout. Then I attached caps at the marked points and formed columns by putting one cap above and two below the home row. Last part was to figure out thumb cluster position, which I did by trial and error. Masking tape made it easy to twiddle with the layout, as the caps held firmly but could be easily removed.
Figure 1: Layout
Figure 2: Cardboard prototype v1
Figure 3: Cardboard prototype v2
Desiging the case
When the layout had been decided and I measured it accurately and designed it in OpenSCAD. Essentially all I did was that after I’d defined all the keys/controller/jack connector/legs positions and sizes, I calculated a sort of convex hull around all those. The resulting 2d shape was extruded, hollowed and all the required holes were made.
Making the case
I had two options. In the beginning I was sure that I’d just order a PCB and would use it as a frame. But as I have shared my plans with a friend, he offered to do a 3d-print for me, given that I’ll provide the plastic.
Before doing the actual print, I decided to make a test print. I designed a small plate with 4 keyholes of slightly different size. After the print I chose the best-fitting one and adjusted the main OpenSCAD model.
Wiring
Soldering was pretty straightforward and given the TS100 iron it was just a joy to do.
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Firmware
QMK has extensive documentation and a detailed tutorial specifically for the
hand-wired keyboards. I just followed it and in fact all I had to do was just to
define controller pins configuration and assign layout to the keys. Then I did
qmk compile && qmk flash and my keyboard came to life.
