geekhack Community > Ergonomics

Turbodox: My First Ergodox Variant (A Cry for Help)

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maltman:
Here is my roughest attempt at beginning a variant of the Ergodox. I call it the Turbodox because it is going to put your coding\hacking\word-processing into "turbo drive".




As you can see this is really rough. But I am mostly starting a thread here to give me some motivation to continue working on it out of fear of disappointing you all.

I added an extra column to the pinkys because 1.5u keys there just seemed to me a waste of space. I made the thumb keys as close as possible to the main board, and I changed the extra keys for the index finger on the left side of the board  to be 1u instead of 1.5u to allow me to move the thumb keys closer. I got rid of the 2u keys in the thumb and added an extra column for the thumb. I think that the thumb group looks pretty ugly and I am debating on getting rid of the 1.5 u on the thumb keys and just having 3 columns of 4 rows all 1u for the thumbs.

Can I add another row to the top? It seems like it might be difficult for a beginner like myself. But I like extra keys.

Thanks for reading my thread.

vvp:
It is probably better to add the function row at the top than the additional column for pinkie. Good luck with the project!

nomaded:
In my opinion, having more keys isn't necessarily better. Being able to easily access those keys is more important. I know for many people, they like to be able to look at the keyboard and see a key and just hit that key. For me, I like the ability to layer additional functionality on the existing keys. I use my thumbs to momentarily hold the layer (think shift key, but instead of Caps, doing other things like symbols, or macros). But I touch-type, so I hold an image in my head of where all the keys are and I just hit them, with or without various modifiers. I know this isn't a solution for everyone, thus there are many different styles of keyboards, and many different ways to layout those keyboards.

I think this is the reason I like the current ErgoDox layout. I have a couple big 2U, easily (for me) to hit and hold keys for my thumbs. This allows me to use the other 4 fingers on the same hand (or opposite hand) to move up and down the rows to hit all the other keys. All the smaller 1U keys in the thumb cluster don't bother me as much. I end up moving the opposite hand to hit them with my index fingers, or map functionality that is significantly less used.

So, for me, having a bunch of thumb keys, and the ability to modify the keyboard firmware completely are the most important parts to increase efficiency.

tp4tissue:
Tp4 thinks more keys is a good idea.. because you can always use more keys.


But they should be an extra row, instead of column,  because an extra column on the outside would get in the way of tenting.


and an extra column on the inside, would reduce what could be mousing space.. ..


So an extra row would be best.

hanya:
You have to check conflicts of keycaps between thumb cluster and main keys. And it seems distance between two rows in the thumb cluster is not enough for 18 mm size keycap.
If footprint of the keyswitch has 18 mm square on it, its makes you to check conflicts between each keycaps.

ErgoDox has 3 pins remained on MCP23018 side. You have added 1 column already. So you can add another 2 rows as you want as function row or something.

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