Awesome! Thank you for sharing. I want to to try and use PCB assembly for the next version of my keyboard. I’ll bookmark this post for information and inspiration.
I’ve been busy building a few Mantis v0.3.3 builds for friends and family. It took me way longer to build these than I had planned, and I still have a few more builds to go before I work on the next version of the design. But I’m getting better at this, and very happy with how these turned out. It’s nice to try out...
Pink switches are very light. I bottom out pretty hard, so they’re probably wasted on me. It makes a nice percussive sound in the wooden case, though. But I do find them quite usable with these sculpted keys. I didn’t like them on a Cantor with MBK key caps as it was too easy to actuate two keys at once by accident.
For me, Pro Red is probably the sweet spot for light linear switches.
The keycaps are my own design, 3D printed at JLC. Their footprint matches these: fkcaps.com/keycaps/hex. They were the original inspiration for this layout and I used them on early prototypes.
I used to have two Type Matrix boards long time ago. It got me into thinking about more ergonomic layouts and taught me first Dvorak and later Colemak. I agree with others’ comments about poor longevity. I also find that it’s not a very ergonomic layout in hindsight.
Learning how to clone this layout in a custom mechanical keyboard is like jumping into the deep end. There may be other ways. E.g. get an XD75 or ID75 and make a layout that’s “close enough”. That takes PCB design and lots of firmware hacking out of the equation. But you’d still learn about different switches, layers, thumb keys, maybe home-row-mods if you want and ease you into more possibilities of firmware hacking. You may find a more ergonomic or efficient layout than the Type Matrix that way, as well.
kbd.news is running their Advent Calendar for the second year and I’m honoured they chose my article about Mantis and hexagonal keys in ergo keyboards for opening it. Enjoy the read and have a happy holiday season …
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.
I was not considering the press point. I was using the center of each key.
In a column staggered layout I’m calling the distance between the centers of adjacent keys in the same column the row spacing. The column spacing is the distance of imaginary lines drawn along adjacent columns (through the key centres). I measure the shortest possible distance, which is at a right angle to those lines.
In a row staggered point of view it’s the other way around.
The different spacing comes from the hexagonal key shape. If you think of it as row staggered, the keys have 21.5mm horizontal (column) spacing and 18.6mm vertical (row) spacing. Rotate your point of view by 30° and this flips to a column staggered layout. Now the columns are spaced 18.6mm and rows are 21.5mm apart.
Square keys don’t have the same hexagonal symmetry. When you look at it as row staggered, it’s normal MX spacing, 19x19mm. When you look at it as column staggered, you need to do some trigonometry. The column angle is atan(0.5) = 26.6°. the column spacing is 19mm × cos(26.6°). The row spacing is from Pythagoras sqrt(19^2 + (19/2)^2).
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.
Yeah, I wasn’t really happy with the height and sharp edge of the taller keys. The latest version flattens that a bit. It still has the lower half a spherical dish facing the key well, but flattens out above that. This makes it more versatile as a thumb key as well.
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 got the basics down, but now looking to do something more complex, and unsure if it’s possible. I have imported a flat shape (a pcb), and I can extrude this out. What I want to do however is to rotate it on its axis, and then extrude it down the z-axis (not directly out from the surface). Is this possible, and if so,...
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.
Title text: If that doesn’t fix it, git.txt contains the phone number of a friend of mine who understands git. Just wait through a few minutes of ‘It’s really pretty simple, just think of branches as…’ and eventually you’ll learn the commands that will fix everything....
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: jwiegley.github.io/git-from-the-bottom-up/
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: github.com/fxkuehl/kuehlmak
I teased Mantis v0.3 with two previous posts. I finally finished building it over the weekend and updated the QMK firmware including RGB Matrix support. I’ve been typing on it all day and it’s a joy to use. The layout and keymap are mostly the same as what I had on v0.2 before....
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’ve slowly been going down the rabbit hole of ergo keyboards and want to replace my current “normal” full-size keyboard, but the sheer amount of variation there is, even disregarding the usual differences like rgb or some extra macro keys or whatever, is kind of giving me decision paralysis, so I’d like some help....
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.
After receiving the PCBs and 3D printed key caps from PCBWay, I assembled everything with the case plates I picked up last week for a first fit-check and sound-check....
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.
I’m excited to use my first post on Lemmy to share an update about the design and some renders of the next version of my Mantis keyboard. I ordered the PCBs, plates and 3D-printed key caps this week. I’m hoping to assemble the first prototype within the next two weeks....
So I should be getting a PiantorFerris Sweep* from Beekeeb in a number of weeks and I thought I would get a head start and plan my layout - or at least one version of it, influenced heavily by Ben Vallack’s video about avoiding press-and-hold mechanics....
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: config.qmk.fm/#/beekeeb/piantor/LAYOUT_split_3x5_…
tuk_tuk – a 42-key katana-stagger in a Minivan case (slrpnk.net)
open source, files on Codeberg...
Mantis Build Guide (github.com)
I finally finished writing a build guide for my Mantis keyboard and taking all the pictures to make it easy to follow. Hope it helps someone …
Mantis v0.3.3 Update (github.com)
I’ve been busy building a few Mantis v0.3.3 builds for friends and family. It took me way longer to build these than I had planned, and I still have a few more builds to go before I work on the next version of the design. But I’m getting better at this, and very happy with how these turned out. It’s nice to try out...
Help me make a "MechaMatrix" 2030 #keyboard, please? (jlai.lu)
Hello to all keyboard enthusiast here on the Fédiverse....
Mantis: Hexagonal Keys in Ergonomic Keyboards (kbd.news)
kbd.news is running their Advent Calendar for the second year and I’m honoured they chose my article about Mantis and hexagonal keys in ergo keyboards for opening it. Enjoy the read and have a happy holiday season …
Updated keycaps for Mantis v0.3 (lemmy.world)
I updated the 3D-printed keycaps for my Mantis v0.3 keyboard to create more sculpted keywells that require less finger movement for typing....
Keywell based keyboards not working for me...
This is just more of me expressing some thoughts that some people might have feedback on....
Any OpenSCAD whiz available to provide some advice?
I’ve got the basics down, but now looking to do something more complex, and unsure if it’s possible. I have imported a flat shape (a pcb), and I can extrude this out. What I want to do however is to rotate it on its axis, and then extrude it down the z-axis (not directly out from the surface). Is this possible, and if so,...
xkcd #1597: Git (programming.dev)
Title text: If that doesn’t fix it, git.txt contains the phone number of a friend of mine who understands git. Just wait through a few minutes of ‘It’s really pretty simple, just think of branches as…’ and eventually you’ll learn the commands that will fix everything....
The BYPO layout: Trying to create a layout optimized fo French (and English) for Corne-style keyboards (lemmy.world)
Coming up with a new layout is HARD :D...
Mantis v0.3 hatched (lemmy.world)
I teased Mantis v0.3 with two previous posts. I finally finished building it over the weekend and updated the QMK firmware including RGB Matrix support. I’ve been typing on it all day and it’s a joy to use. The layout and keymap are mostly the same as what I had on v0.2 before....
How do you choose a right ergo keyboard for you?
I’ve slowly been going down the rabbit hole of ergo keyboards and want to replace my current “normal” full-size keyboard, but the sheer amount of variation there is, even disregarding the usual differences like rgb or some extra macro keys or whatever, is kind of giving me decision paralysis, so I’d like some help....
Mantis v0.3 fit-check and sound-check (imgur.com)
After receiving the PCBs and 3D printed key caps from PCBWay, I assembled everything with the case plates I picked up last week for a first fit-check and sound-check....
Mantis v0.3 parts are ordered (github.com)
I’m excited to use my first post on Lemmy to share an update about the design and some renders of the next version of my Mantis keyboard. I ordered the PCBs, plates and 3D-printed key caps this week. I’m hoping to assemble the first prototype within the next two weeks....
Planning my ~~Piantor~~Ferris Sweep* (lemmy.world)
So I should be getting a PiantorFerris Sweep* from Beekeeb in a number of weeks and I thought I would get a head start and plan my layout - or at least one version of it, influenced heavily by Ben Vallack’s video about avoiding press-and-hold mechanics....