Colemak

Well, there are many ways to do that. It's kind of a rabbit hole on its own. For me, I prefer layers to combos to access special keys like symbols, numbers, and function keys.

If you meant modifiers like Ctrl and Shift, I use home row mods. I also started with 40+ keys like a Piantor and swore I would never like home row mods, but ended up loving them after trying it.

Anyway, layers feel pretty intuitive to me. What do you think is making layers not easy for you?

It's 8051

Also, there's a commercially available CH552T dev board for about a dollar. I actually use this for development: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004141926425.html

Even cheaper if you buy just the chip. Just add a USB connector and two capacitors then that's it. No crystal, flash, etc. needed. A CH552G goes for about 30 cents: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003402478164.html

Coming from daily-driving a Klor, it's a very natural transition. I can touch type on it mostly fine. Ergonomics is insane. All the keys feel much closer and way easier to reach. I miss the splay on the Klor though since I've come to like it.

Looking good! DM'd you

Go for it! I have a schematic in mind but too lazy to learn KiCad. Would love to help out :)

Thanks! Plate is aluminum. I brushed it with sandpaper and applied some metal polish for a shiny brushed look.

I got the case from JLCPCB with their cheapest resin (8111X). Got it for only one dollar including shipping lol thanks to the $7 coupon you can get from sharing 3D models. Out of the box, fairly sturdy. It was semi-translucent white but a bit yellowish and ugly, so I spray painted it.

Hmm actually, FAK could be extended to CH582. It would have to be a complete rewrite on the hardware code, but I could keep the Nickel config mostly compatible between CH55x and CH58x.

You just gave me an idea. Sounds like I can make a FAK spec and then there'd be compliant hardware-specific implementation for different chips 🤯

Yep, and I think they're even working on dongle mode. They call it "triple 2.4G" on the readme.

Here: https://nickel-lang.org https://github.com/tweag/nickel

This. I like my space on the middle right thumb key

Thanks! Have fun tinkering once you get the boards 😁

Btw your work on Cheapino is awesome! Made me aware of other matrix scanning methods. I've been trying to do round-robin matrix scanning on FAK and so far looks like it's working well

Cool! Though CH58/9x series might be better for efficiency because it's Bluetooth 5. CH57x is BT 4.

And QMK has already been ported to CH582 but personally haven't tried it yet. https://github.com/O-H-M2/qmk_port_ch582

Thanks! No CH55x chip supports Bluetooth so it's USB only. I thought of possibly adding a Bluetooth module, but that's almost always a SoC and you're much better off using that as the main (and only) microcontroller instead.

There's this: https://forum.arduino.cc/t/jdy-23-bluetooth-module/672581 Could work as a "dumb" BT module but even so, it can't do HID over BT directly so have to translate that to HID with another chip. Not so power efficient too.

Basically, I've been through this path and it always led me to: just use one MCU with BT. Fortunately, CH582 is a cheap one. RISC-V with BLE. And it's been recently ported to QMK as well: https://github.com/O-H-M2/qmk_port_ch582