RectaReight - A Rectilinear/Ortholinear Full Size Keyboard

[Reight]

I couldn't touch type at all on regular keyboard partially due to the staggered layout and partially due to the horrible wrist angle is induced in my left hand.
So I've been using an IC Ergodox and a Ducky Pocket for a while now and find it to be far kinder to my wrists and actually allows me to touch type at average 40wpm not earth shattering but nearly double the speed of a regular and pain free! 

I've started a job in an office and that is where my Ergodox currently resides, plenty of people comment on it favorably, but when offered a try on it nobody has actually accepted.
"What turns people off this kind of keyboard?" I wondered.
With it looking so different to regular keyboards, and peoples inability to acutally touch type it's bound to scare people off for fear of looking hopelessly inept.
With that potential reasoning of too different, too intimidating, (and now I'm in need of something other than a regular keyboard at home) I have decided to making a full size Rectilinear/Ortholinear keyboard.






It's turned out alright and there were plenty of things to learn along the way
It is controlled by a Teensy 2 ++ using QMK
The Layout was planned using keyboard-layout-editor
The PCB was designed in Eagle
Keycaps are XDA (personally I would rather SA but wouldn't be as versatile with the layout)
Made one board with MX Browns and one board with MX Clears
There are no stabilizers on the 2u keys, that will bother some people out there as it used to bother me, but I had mixed luck with costars in the past binding and would rather a wobbly key rather than a stuck or binding one.

Things I'd do differently are:

• Making an actual enclosure for it.
• Consider using standard sized function keys, it's rather hard to find 2u Shift, Return, Tab, Caps lock keys.
• I would like to move the keypad in between the the T and Y columns but that moves away from the not too different goal, the compromise would be to put a bit of extra planing into they layout and make the switches hot swap-able so that one can start with a regular keyboard then move the number pad to the center or even to left hand side if one wished.
• Have the rather small SMD diodes installed with the pcb manufacture, rather that  trying to install them by hand with a heat gun
• Consider installing the controller components directly onto the PCB and using a USB C connector
• Adding a USB hub IC for a mouse, memory stick etc.

Tiny SOD 323 Diode

About 130 diodes later 

[piit79]

Nice project! I'm an ortho buy so I generally approve, but that board is massive ) And has two arrow clusters

A few points:
* SOD-123 diodes are easy to solder on, I imagine using a heatgun was a bit of a pain
* Regarding stabs - why not use regular PCB-mounted ones? Footprints are widely available
* There is a through-hole USB-C connector used in Mysterium, Discipline and other through-hole kits that is fairly easy to use

Congrats on actually making an original board!

[Reight]

Nice project! I'm an ortho buy so I generally approve, but that board is massive ) And has two arrow clusters

A few points:
* SOD-123 diodes are easy to solder on, I imagine using a heatgun was a bit of a pain
* Regarding stabs - why not use regular PCB-mounted ones? Footprints are widely available
* There is a through-hole USB-C connector used in Mysterium, Discipline and other through-hole kits that is fairly easy to use

Congrats on actually making an original board!

Yeah it is massive. And heavy too! It weighs it in at 1.129kg (2lb 7,8oz)   )
I can see how it could be thought that there are two arrow clusters, but it's an attempt at making the Home,End, PgUp,Pgdown keys more intuitive and easy to find without looking at them, so I pulled the Delete and Insert keys up a smidge and the Page keys down a bit, though I left provision for it to be configured in the regular two by three arrangement.

A few points:
* SOD-123 diodes are easy to solder on, I imagine using a heatgun was a bit of a pain

Yes the SOD 123 footprint would have been a heap easier to deal with than the SOD 323  I'll have to consider those for the next build I do.

* Regarding stabs - why not use regular PCB-mounted ones? Footprints are widely available

I had considered this, but the 2u keys are all designed to be either a single 2u or two 1u keys, so I didn't have any pcb real-estate left, so I kinda designed myself into a corner with my attempts at being flexible.

* There is a through-hole USB-C connector used in Mysterium, Discipline and other through-hole kits that is fairly easy to use

Nice  I'll have to look into that for future builds as well


Thanks for the feedback 

[suicidal_orange]

I thought half the benefit of an ergodox was the split allowing for an angle between the halves and tenting (raising the middle) so will be interesting to see if your pain returns.  I really hope not as it would be a shame to not use these monsters.

I'm really impressed you had the patience to solder those tiny diodes even with a heat gun

[Reight]

I thought half the benefit of an ergodox was the split allowing for an angle between the halves and tenting (raising the middle) so will be interesting to see if your pain returns.  I really hope not as it would be a shame to not use these monsters.

I totally agree that the split layout of the ergodox is a good thing, I love that about my ergodox.  But this was an attempt at making this as familiar as possible to people that think ergonomic split keyboards and rectilinear layouts are "too different" or "too intimidating" it was also partly designed to help people like myself that couldn't touch type to save their lives on a staggered layout, make sense of things in a non confronting grid layout.

I considered getting a Preonic,but I use and do miss the having just plain F Keys at the top of my keyboard,along with the number pad for quickly entering numbers one handed in cad programs and the like. So I made this behemoth instead.

I've been using the Recta for a while at home now and am pretty pleased with it.
Comfort wise it's some where in between a conventional keyboard and that of the ergodox. Which is not that surprising, I have to be mindful of my wrist, it does get a little uncomfortable. but is certainly isn't excruciating like it was trying to type on a conventional keyboard.
If i did another design iteration I'd probably make it the entire board one honking big hot swap-able grid so if you want the alphas in all together you could do that, or if you want the number pad to divide the alphas to give a better separation of the alphas without making two separate boards you could do that too.

I'm really impressed you had the patience to solder those tiny diodes even with a heat gun

Thanks  I still don't know what the hell I was thinking when I chose that particular size of diode