this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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ErgoMechKeyboards

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Ergonomic, split and other weird keyboards

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Keep it ergo

Posts must be of/about keyboards that have a clear delineation between the left and right halves of the keyboard, column stagger, or both. This includes one-handed (one half doesn't exist, what clearer delineation is that!?)

i.e. no regular non-split¹ row-stagger and no non-split¹ ortholinear²

¹ split meaning a separation of the halves, whether fixed in place or entirely separate, both are fine.
² ortholinear meaning keys layed out in a grid

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10% Sale - Storewide (www.etsy.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Skree to c/ergomechkeyboards
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I'm so torn; while I'm glad to not be supporting the mess that reddit was devolving into. I miss the shear volume of content that was on Ergo Mech Keyboards.

Also, it's killed sales! So why not have a sale, for more sales?! https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheBigSkree

Or if you want to hit me up directly: www.skree.us or on here, or email me at [email protected]. Discord too; Alakuu or Skree_LLC

I offer what, I and many of my customers have stated as the best FDM BLE dactyls you can buy!

Lots of super cool things being cooled in the background like near solderless flexible PCB, MCU, and custom thumb single key pcb support for any kind of keyboard building!

That's a very old version, but the idea is to offer JST and FPC options that either support my flexible pcb ecosystem or with JST cables you can solder to ANY existing pcbs you'd want! The MCU I'm dubbing the "pad" allows for either the use of the built in LIR2450 battery or use of any size Lithium battery you want if you solder to the battery pads! More details to follow once I get the final revision pcbs in and tested.

RGB underglow; finally got a order and it turned out super neat!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFUalBG_SUE

Choc v1 dactyls are basically done, just need to order switches in volume so I can keep my normal out the door in ~1-4 days. I'll have more traditional thumb clusters (maybe advantage like too?) when I put up listings. If you want to try my weird design let me know! I've got the flexible pcbs that I'll be selling for Choc v1 here soon too!

Dactyl-CC. I've seen this repo for a while and with my current work on providing Kinesis switch replacement and general board repair I figured I'd try it. The board feels pretty spot on to the Advantage line!

Speaking of Kinesis! How about some Heartbeat switches on a 360pro?

If you want to have your switches professionally replaced, or if you have a old, broken, or misbehaving Kinesis keyboard I'd gladly talk with you and figure out a solution!

There's tons more, I'm a bit scattered. With the big sales slump I'm blaming on the lack of eyeballs that were on Reddit (hoping it's not general economic downturn stuff) I'm less able to finalize products. But I'll get more interesting things out the door very soon!

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hijacking for some 360pro questions!

I have the same keyboard, and recently I've been facing some connectivity issues and was wondering if you've seen the same or know a fix.

Issues:

  • random connection drop outs with both sides during typing
  • after random dropouts (maybe 5x in the span of an hour once every couple of days both in windows and osx) it just repeats one of the keys I pressed until I input another key press
  • right side doesn't always connect to the left side after switching on and off

For all these issues, the battery is charged and they only started in the past month after owning the keyboard at launch. I tried doing a hard reboot with the reset button, and reinstalling the default software along with flashing my custom configuration through zmk.

Any mods you recommend other than replacing switches or keycaps? I opted for the kinesis blank keycaps with domed home row keys to match my kinesis advantage 2 feel :)

Love it otherwise! Thanks for the post :D

[–] Skree 2 points 1 year ago

I have some gripes with their design. One side they're properly positioning the antenna. The other, not so much.

If memory serves this is the right side. The antenna is pointing away from what it cross pares to. It's got the ribbon cable carrying GND, VCC, Rows and columns violating it's signal space too.

The best suggestion to resolve this would be to tape down the FPC cable so it's violating the yellow area as little as possible. But that doesn't help that it's pointed the wrong way. Truth be told I don't know if this is really a fix for their connectivity issues.

I'm just getting into trying the holyiot module they're using in some of my designs. With other nRF52840 modules I've never had signal issues. ZMK does a stellar job. But I don't know if the 360pro issues are tied to this specifically or something I haven't seen just yet. Maybe it's down to their revisions to ZMK? The key press held down is really weird. I wonder if it's somehow related to power modes being weird on their ZMK.

It might be possible to change the routing slightly.

I'm in the process of building a hotswap option for the 360 and 360 pro boards. 360 is more of a pain in the butt due to their use of shift registers instead of actual diodes. It's a bonkers and expensive decision if you ask me, but I'm not the multimillion dollar company.

Actual mods:

It depends really on your goals. Compared to the Advantage2 the 360 is like a middle schooler's science project to a reasonably solid product needing a few tweaks.

You can play around with sound deadening. The boards are naturally pretty heavy so I wouldn't consider weights. I loved the Haimu heartbeats, the board is silly quiet now. If you'd like I can see if I can get the owner's perspective on here sometime. Keycaps: I know people swear by the Kinesis caps. I didn't mind just DSA caps. Though shine through DSA is a little more difficult to get ahold of. I think they offer PBT caps finally so I'd go that route and not worry about it.

Honestly, my changes to a 360pro would be deadening because I'd be opening the case for switch replacement. I'd want hotswap (I hope to offer this in a couple of months), and that's really it. I'd love to say I'm skilled enough to reverse engineer their thumb + main board. I don't feel comfortable doing that sadly. I can design a replacement but it would only work on traditional ZMK and would be somewhat expensive.

Side note: Upgrade keyboards selling different batteries seems silly. Firstly, the battery in the 360pro is just as big. It's well fitted, and the thicker battery likely means longer lifespan (dendrites and stuff not an actual chemist). They'll possibly tell you about diode stretching, and how it takes them 4+hours for a board replacement. I call BS. But at least they're "kinesis approved." There's nothing in the case / board that denotes tampering. I don't know how a warranty department would notice any of my work other than the switches themselves are different. I've enjoyed upgradekeyboards as a source for supplies for nearly a year, but their kinesis service being 6-9months out is bonkers really.

[–] demibyte 3 points 1 year ago

The flexible pcbs look great, very interested for the next build. Also potentially interested in the "pad" mcu you are working on there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Nice. Thinking about ordering a dactyl pcb.