I'm really excited that I started frequenting geekhack again a few weeks ago
. I've lurked on and off for years but just signed up for an account earlier this week.
Anyway, a friend and I are both very interested in trying to put together ergodox 'boards for ourselves. It's not something either of us has experience with, though, so I'll definitely be looking to the forum for advice on getting keycaps and so on.
Also, I've used a Kinesis Advantage for six years and absolutely love the ability to have multiple keyboard layers and switch between them with a foot pedal. I see that the firmware that Ben Blazak has put together supports arbitrary keyboard layers, and I think that's fantastic. I would really love to be able to hook up one (or several) layers to pedals or some other external device. That should be relatively easy, right? I mean, a switch is a switch, and it's just a matter of hooking it up somehow?
I'm a technical person as far as software goes (programmer, mostly C++ lately) but I've never really messed around with hardware design or even rewiring anything. Does anybody have any advice for where to start down this journey? Is anybody else planning on doing the same?