Hi again, sorry for the slow response. Thanks for the kind words everyone. I actually am moving in about a week, and so won’t start soldering, etc. until sometime after that. Maybe 2 weeks from now. But I've been thinking some more in the mean time, and fiddling. (No more pictures just yet though). Some more thoughts/replies:
A baseball mitt keyboard. Awesome.
Love it! I hadn’t thought of that analogy.
I've never been a huge fan of the bowl, because on the upper row keys, it changes from pressing the keys down into Lifting the finger up and forward.
You might be right about that. I need to desolder some keyswitches and try various arrangements of them to see what's actually easiest to reach/press. I think the bowl shape will be a big win for the keys below the home row, but you might be right about the upper row keys.
Would you consider moving the trackball?
I’d consider just about anything. Its position in my plastilina model is perfect if I just want to swipe at it with the side of a thumb. If I want to actually move it in 2 dimensions, I'll need to move my wrist a bit and get my pointer finger involved, I think. I have a bit more to say about the trackball, down below.
Also, thanks hoggy for the pointers.
I think you're on the right track with the thumb keys fanning out radially. I've been working on a similar design and can very comfortably reach 7 keys with each of my thumbs. The downside however is that it is more critical to get the sizing right on a fitted board than a conventional keyboard.
Hi kurplop.
This is great. I agree with you that getting the sizing / spacing is crucial. Maybe there's some way to make a few components which can be adjusted relative to each-other to fit different hand sizes. Not going to worry about it for the first few iterations though. Once I get it fitting my own hand I can figure out fitting something to other people's hands (if ever). I think 7 keys, or even the 6 I'm showing here, might be more than I could remember to use with the thumbs. You should try tilting your thumb buttons a bit, and maybe adding one, tilted sideways-ish, inside the ring. I find that a fair bit easier to hit than something where your second ring of buttons is.
Just in case, here is a link to my bowl prototype (http://deskthority.net/workshop-f7/an-other-diy-keyboard-project-t4560.html#p91555). At the bottom of the page there is a link to some advices.
Neat. How easy is it for you to press the top row buttons in that design? Also, how to you press the long keys at the outsides?
Be carefull with mouse buttons they could be difficult to catch with your configuration.
I’m not sure if I’ll have mouse style microswitches for a couple of buttons, or just re-use some of the existing keyboard keys for clicking the mouse. I don’t plan to do anything where I need to click one key repeatedly at high speed, so I think just using keyboard switches everywhere will work okay.
it seems like a LOT more work to put the scroll wheel in between the U-I row rather than just puttin the scroll wheel off to the side, from a design standpoint.
You might well be right. I need to take apart a few mice to figure out how big their scroll wheel mechanisms are. I could also put something like a trackpoint or thumb-stick in that gap. Or just move the keys closer together.
In my opinion everything seems to be a little too spread out
Yeah, I agree a bit. I think actual keycaps which are sloped a bit in at the top can fit closer together, angled toward each-other, than I'm putting my clay keys.
I can only strongly advice to test the same putty setup but with real switches and caps, and then try to touchtype for at least a few minutes to see if all the distances and angles seem comfortable - on several occasions a design that felt good when moving your fingers around but without actually typing anything meaningful later had to be adjusted to feel right.
Thanks for the advice. I definitely need to make sure I test test test before I start finalizing anything.
how do you intend to build the case?
That’s an open question. Maybe I can 3d-print some parts at a hackerspace nearby. Or maybe I’ll start with a flat design laser-cut from acrylic, or similar.
I suggest that your next step is replacing your clay keys with some real properly-sized keys from a cheap keyboard. That way, you would get a better feel for how large they need to be and how the layout will really be. Consider also that each switch will require some space, which becomes important where the thumb cluster meets the regular keys.
Definitely. I think I left enough space here, but I'll have to try it out with some physical keyswitches.
For the construction, consider Cherry MX. They can work with 3D-printed keywells only. Alps require both a keywell and a PCB.
Why can’t the Alps keyswitches be used without a PCB?
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Again, thanks everyone for the responses. Now a bit more about the trackball plan:
Most current trackballs use one optical sensor, something like an optical/laser mouse sensor, and detect motion in 2 dimensions. But I actually want to use this trackball for, among other things, manipulating rotations of 3d objects and behaving just as a 1-dimensional knob. To that end, I plan to put 2 sensors under the trackball, and figure out how to calibrate them so that I can detect any arbitrary 3-dimensional rotation. With that, I can choose how to turn that into a 1-, 2-, or 3-dimensional input.
One thing I've always disliked about trackballs is that starting movement at any point that's not directly opposite the sensor leads to 2-d mouse movements which don't intuitively directly correspond to ball rotations. But if I can capture the full 3d rotation, then I can on the fly re-center my trackball to treat any axes of rotation I prefer as x and y.
It's going to probably take at least a few weeks of wiring things up, fiddling, writing software, etc. to make the trackball work anything like how I want it to. Maybe at some point I’ll open up a thread to discuss such issues in the input devices forum.
