Thank you for the reference. I just watched the movie for the first time. I mean I was going for an organic looking shape with these keycaps, but maybe I succeeded a bit more than I intended. I should make a "special" version for Halloween.
luckybipedal
joined 2 years ago
The title picture and the first picture in my post both show them installed. Here is a direct link to the title picture.
Disclaimer: I haven't used a keywell keyboard.
Does the keywell cause the use of different muscles and finger joints to press keys? On a flat keyboard, key strokes seem to move the whole finger from the knuckle. If a keywell results in a curling or stretching motion of the fingers to actuate the keys, that would use different muscles and move different joints.
Another thing would be whether you're using wrist rests differently.
I've done something like that with a multmatrix transformation. There is an example of doing a skew transformation like that in the OpenSCAD user manual. This works with any 3D shape, not just extrusions. So you could transform a cube into a parallelepiped.
IME, to use git effectively, and make sense of the man-pages, you have to know a lot of the internals of how git works. I found it helpful to read "Git from the bottom up" when I had to start using it professionally: https://jwiegley.github.io/git-from-the-bottom-up/
With the right key mapping the hex grid naturally leads to hand rotation and column stagger. It also takes "1u distance from home" literally because there are no diagonal keys for the index fingers and pinkies that are 1.4u away. It allows keys to rotate in 60° steps rather than 90° steps. That allows for some interesting ways to exploit tilted key cap profiles.
I may ask the opposite: why squares? That's just as arbitrary, if you think about it. I learned typing on a mechanical typewriter that had round keys.
I wrote a SW a while ago that does an automated optimization of keyboard layouts for a given body of text. It only optimizes the base layer. Since I did this with small/custom keyboards in mind, it only considers the core 3x10 keys. You'd still need to create other layers for numbers, symbols, etc. Even with all the automation, it's still hard to make a good layout. It depends a lot on the text you use to train it, and on the set of criteria you're trying to optimize (heat map, rolls, same-finger bigrams, hand alternation, minimal finger movement, etc.). It also generates many layouts, so choosing one can be daunting. I added a ranking system that should make it easier.
The project is dormant at the moment. I never quite got to the point where I was ready to commit to actually learning one of the auto-generated layouts. I want to pick it up again at some point, write some documentation and make an "optimal" layout for my Mantis keyboard. The code is on github: https://github.com/fxkuehl/kuehlmak
I don't work for PCBWay. They liked the design and reached out to offer to support the project in return for some favourable mentions.
I fell into this rabbit hole when looking into all the options available when ordering an Ergodox EZ. I discovered the Iris keyboard and really liked its compact shape. I ended up not placing the order for that Ergodox and built myself an Iris v4 instead.
Iris turned out to be a good way to ease myself into the world of DIY split ergo boards. It's affordable, easy to assemble and has enough keys to ease the transition from full sized keyboards. It's a good starting point for experimenting with layers and other features that eventually may lead you to 40% or smaller layouts.
The little holes are for the LEDs to shine through because I wasn't sure how opaque the 3D printed material would be. Turns out that the holes are probably not needed.
My layout for v0.2 is here (I'm using the Colemak version): https://github.com/fxkuehl/qmk_firmware/blob/mantis-v0.2/keyboards/mantis/keymaps/default/keymap.c
I've used QMK configurator to sketch out keymaps before. You can download your keymap as JSON file and later upload it again to make more changes, or save a few different versions. It can even compile your firmware, but I've not used that feature. No programming required if you only use basic QMK features. It supports Piantor with a 3x5 layout: https://config.qmk.fm/#/beekeeb/piantor/LAYOUT_split_3x5_3
That's a cool find. I had not heard of the Klacker BS. The exact spacing and hand angle will be slightly different but pretty close. Column-staggered hexagonal keys give you 18.6mm between columns and 21.5 between rows with a 30° angle. 0.5u row-staggered MX keys with 19mm spacing give you about 17mm between columns and 21.2mm between rows at 26.6°. Also the resulting column-stagger is not exactly 0.5u but about 0.45u.
Klacker BS doesn't eliminate the top inner index finger key. Moving that to the pinkies like Mantis does, would bring the hands 1u closer together.