I 3d printed a custom sized keyboard using open source software and hardware designs.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/45765963
The design is based on the excellent Dactyl keyboard, generated with https://ryanis.cool/cosmos/ and it runs the excellent qmk firmware. It is handwired:
and I have also made a palm support using inkscape and openscad
All printed on a reprap prusa i3 derivative.
This helps me use my computer with less pain, so I want to call out all the wonderful projects and people who contribute to them which made it possible.
Total cost? $60 aud, amortised filament ~15 bucks worth maybe? and a lot of my time haha.
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I will always upvote split ergo (column staggered) keyboards. Nice stuff, looks much much cleaner than the one i made and threw out π
I have improvements I will make on my portable keyboard for lappy, but I'm never going back.
They're a lot more comfortable.
Man, 3d printing is punk as fuck, I love when people post bespoke shit.
Tinkering with electronics alone indoors is like the opposite of punk.
Don't tell me that you're one of those people that think punk is all about attitude and loud music. DIY and community building is punk af.
Okay, Star Platinum.
Very cool! Can I crosspost to ![email protected] ?
Nobody needs permission to post a link to something somewhere. What horror happened to you?
Oh, I've seen it happen before, such as here: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/45667427?scrollToComments=true
Thanks anyway, I'll post right away
There are always lunatics, you'd go mad trying to please everyone. It's one thing to not promote harassment. But if you put something into the stormwater drain of the information superhighway it's flowing everywhere with the rest or the shit.
You'd get further cursing the rain for falling on you.
Holy cow! I didn't know about that community, thank you!
I love those keycaps π
https://www.printables.com/model/396950-xda-keycap-set
Super neat. What are those knobs for?
What kind of switches did you choose?
Knobs are for knobby things. QMK is extremely configurable. Sometimes they are volume, sometimes seeking, sometimes mouse x and y, sometimes scroll wheel, sometimes keyboard arrows, mostly decorative.
MX browns. I am distinctly not obsessed with keyboards. I just like being able to use computers in postures that don't hurt.
The anti-trackball.
I have a trackball, but for pixel perfect placement etc. The knobs help me draw badly with more precision.
What did you program your knobs to do? All of the above?
indeed. Layers like an onion or an ogre.
Purple dactyl represents
How is trackball? I wasn't sure how easily layering would work giving up easy access to half the thumb cluster.
Sadly I couldn't get a bearing/ball mix that wouldn't feel "gritty".
Otherwise the hand position is nice and layering is easy to use even with the ball. Overall nice to use and great setup for CAD software.
Tried ball transfer units?
I've found Ruby balls ok sometimes but BTUs are where it's at. Expensive though.
Very cool!
Honest question, does using a keyboard like this make you forget how to use a standard one?
I know op did it for the pain, so it's a moot point. But if I did it just because it's cool, and to avoid injury in the future, would I mess up my normal keyboard abilities?
I also switched to colemakdh with a series of layers and qmk tricks. My typing is quite slow so far, around 30 wpm, I was never an amazing typist but I haven't noticed difficulty with standard qwerty layouts.
It's not like you get confused between a harp and a guitar, or a spoon and a knife.
for me, switching to dvorak about 10 years ago has made me absolutely useless at typing qwerty⦠i get used to it after 5min, but much slower than i used to be and wow is it paiiiiiin (both literally in my wrists - the reason i switched, and figuratively in that i feel like im fighting the keyboard for every word)
β¦ or perhaps you mean the differences in physical layout
I haven't noticed difficulty. Maybe because the layout is so different, maybe I will with time, or maybe I'm just
better than youlucky :pI see you've played knifey spoony before
I'm new to this convo, but how's your typing speed, now?
Impressive build, btw! Still liking your keyboard? How have the 3D printed keycaps held up?
I am maybe slightly faster than I was on qwerty once you account for accuracy (more accurate on this). I actually had some injury issues that stopped me practicing or writing much in general, but I would say I vastly prefer colemakdh and ergo keyboards to type on anyway.
I spent a lot of time fussing around the symbols layer (brackets, logical operators etc) and that's been a huge comfort gain for coding.
Keycaps have held up fine, the ridges accumulate dead skin a bit and need regular cleaning to not look disgusting. I actually have a resin printer now and since I've settled on my layout have been meaning to print some embossed smooth keycaps.
Oh that's great! I moved to colemak about a year ago due to hand/wrist/finger pain, and it's helped a lot. My average typing speed is probably about the same as it had been with qwerty. My highest typing test speed (which isn't very important) with colemak hasn't reached my highest qwerty speed, though.
My qwerty speed now? Garbage. I even have to look to type lmao
I really need to switch to an ergo split keeb though, because switching to colemak alone hasn't eliminated all of the pain. I've been inspired by your post and might (ADHD lol) get around to building one soon!
That's good to hear. Ew, hands are nasty, aren't they? If I actually end up doing this, I think I'll try printing the caps, but might end up buying some in the end. Thanks for the info!
I would strongly recommend it. After switching I can barely tolerate normal keyboards as I now notice how much strain I'm under using them.
Just the ability to move around with your postural changes is so great. It's very easy to make your own and I thoroughly endorse it.
I did it! Thank you for the inspiration and encouragement!
I was gonna use Cosmos for the case, but when I went to download my final design, it kept erroring π So, I went with Skeletyl instead. It's designed around a PCB, but I hand-wired it instead.
I took inspiration from a Joe Scotto video and got away with using one microcontroller by connecting the two halves with a network cable (plus one extra wire because I needed 9 total). I can only include one image in this reply, but might make a post about the build with more photos.
Well done! bet you got a lot better at soldering quickly haha!
Sold!
As someone who runs an ergodox ez with a custom key layout and who goes in to work from time to time using normal QWERTY keyboards (both English and German configuration), you do not lose anything. It's incredibly easy to switch between every config you have.
I also think most people would appreciate a split keyboard setup because it's so much better for posture and health and comfortability. Would highly recommend.
Oh now this is different than I've heard, some others have had issues switching back and forth. So maybe I will give it a try, once I've got qwerty up to a decent speed and I feel comfortable with it.
Right now it's a problem because if I'm in a hurry, I'm tempted to type the old way, or a broken mixture of the two that messes with what I've learned. Not good. Gotta slow down and do it right, bah..
Thanks for the recommendations, I'm gonna put a 3d printed split board on my list of things I'll definitely get to some day and totally won't get pushed off the back of the furthest back burner lol
Lol. For context, it took me maybe two weeks to get back up to full speed on a new typing layout. When I moved to Germany they moved some keys around on standard qwerty and it took me a couple of days.
If you're already touch typing I think most changes are easy to adapt to and don't overwrite previous muscle memory. Your brain is powerful, believe it is and it will work.
That's good to know, thanks! I'm still just learning to touch type. I spent a few decades typing fast enough but always looking at the keys. This year I've started learning touch typing, I'm only a half dozen hours in, so still pretty new.
But when I get good I'll take this into consideration! Thanks!
I use Colemak on phone and Qwerty on desktop, and never think about it.
Interesting π€ why? Just curious
I tried other layouts because it's easy with an on-screen phone keyboard, just an oftion in the app menu, and Colemak felt the most intuitive to use. I didn't have to get used to it, it felt natural from the start.
It's not as easy to switch with a physical keyboard, with so many games having movement and other functions tied to specific keys that assume a qwerty layout, so I kept using what I was used to in that circumstance. I don't even think about it.
One of these days, I'll probably buy/set up a physical Colemak keyboard, and see how that is with games.
Neat!
I know I'm late but my keyboard has a physical switch I can use to change layouts.
I really can't type on QWERTY anymore but if I'm too lazy to change/remap the game to work with Colemak I'll just flip it to QWERTY to play.
Though if the game has chat you want to use you don't have much choice but to remap the controls.
How does that work? Does it move all the keys around for you or is it, like, double-sided? Or it just changes the layout used by the system while you're in a game? That sounds useful as long as you aren't typing in chat.
My keyboard has no letters on it, so the layout doesn't matter. I made myself learn to not look at it.
The switch changes what the keyboard is telling the computer I'm pressing. The computer itself is set to QWERTY.
I've never seen one like that before. Very interesting!
Respect for your tism.
Way cool. That looks really professional, too.
Thank you, if I have produced anything decent it is entirely owed to those who went before and were selfless enough to leave directions.
Looks so good. One day I will build a Dactyl as well, one day.
Pretty easy with that cosmos thing I linked. you can literally drag and drop buttons and shit. Pretty neat!
The most time consuming part was cleaning up the keycap prints as that involved removing support material and a brim for each. Soldering was around 4 hours work.
What the hell is this madness?
Very nice! That's a pretty big boy ;)
I don't have particularly large hands, but they're not small either. Most peripherals appear to be made for short people, but we grow tall under the searing sun of the land downunder.
AFAIK you shouldn't need wrist rests, dactyl should allow you to rest on table nicely!
(I have a Scylla)
I'm sorry I made my custom keyboard wrong.
I don't think that was meant as criticism, it seemed like they were trying to be helpful.
Awesome keeb, BTW!
Helpful, how? Obviously I am using palm rests because it is more comfortable than not using palm rests. If I have made them to a specific height one might imagine I had a specific reason no?
Helpful by sharing information they believed to be true, that they thought you might not have heard/known. I don't see any malice in their post or any expectation that you change what you're doing.
That's not helpful
Respectful, I disagree. I've learned a lot from people making small comments like that, even when they're unintentionally blunt.
What could I learn from that?
The person has not built a dactyl, they have not used this dactyl which has several customisations, they have not sat at my desk, they don't have my body.
They're just stating something useless from a position of ignorance because.... why? If you don't know what you're talking about just don't say anything. 90% of the misinformation on the internet would disappear overnight if people followed that. As a happy side effect men online might learn some basic manners too.
On another note cause there are already a lot a good responses here and there :p.
How are your beavers doing? π
Never ask a lady about her beaver(s).
My beavers have wet fur, and a variety of things to play on.
π€£ !
Did you print your keycaps, too??
Too many keys
The funny thing is that it's not even enough keys, you need to use layers
Yeah that was part of the joke. Guess it didn't leave well.
Found a Planck user
Sorry your childhood sucked and you never learned how to talk like a decent human being.
Lol ok. First off, that wasn't mean.
Second, it was an opinion.
Third, it was a joke.
To explain the joke, keyboards with less keys than this exist and it's a common meme for people to comment "not enough keys" when people share images of them.
Thought this was a keyboard community. Didn't realize it was 3d printing.
Can I have one?
If you need stuff printed I, or someone more local, would be more than happy to help. Otherwise all the knowledge and tools are available for free.
Dactyl! I've really wanted to build one and embrace the Coleman. How was the build?
I strongly recommend checking verticle clearance for the microcontroller if you angle it.
I also strongly recommend living somewhere where asking for enameled wire with an enamel that can be burned off with solder doesn't get you blank stares.
If you can't do the latter Livingston sells scapels which work well to remove insulation in the middle of wires.
reminds me of naked lunch
Reminds me of something from the Neverhood Game.
I moved to Germany and had to sell my 3d printer for the move, but when I pick up a new one finalizing a custom dactyl keyboard will be one of my first projects. I use an ergodox ez right now (they're amazing do check them out if you want a pre built solution), but I want as many thumb keys as I can possibly handle so I want to upgrade to a custom solution.
This is really cool to see, thanks for sharing!