geekhack Marketplace > Drop

Thoughts on the CTRL Keyboard?

(1/2) > >>

etatauri:
I was wondering what you guys think of the new CTRL keyboard that's coming out. I am tempted to buy a barebones board.

I have a K-Type at the moment, and while I still love the keyboard I am a little disappointed by the lack of software support.
What're ya'lls opinions regarding KLL vs QMK, and K-Type vs CTRL?

Blaise170:
I joined the drop for it. It checks almost every box that I'd want in a custom and also comes in at under $200.

mkozlows:

--- Quote from: etatauri on Mon, 09 April 2018, 11:51:14 ---I have a K-Type at the moment, and while I still love the keyboard I am a little disappointed by the lack of software support.
What're ya'lls opinions regarding KLL vs QMK

--- End quote ---

Are you a programmer-type, or someone who would use the visual configurators?

If the former, you can take QMK out for a drive right now with your K-Type (it doesn't support the LEDs, apparently, but the keys should work fine) and get a sense of it. I'd say that the general sense is that it's more mature, has capabilities that KLL doesn't expose, and that defining custom keymaps is actually a little nicer. (In theory, KLL being a declarative DSL should make it cleaner than raw C; in practice, QMK's raw C has a bunch of ease-of-use macros that make it syntactically pleasant, while KLL has a rigid JSON/YAML-like format.)

If the latter, yeah, I'll be honest and admit that I'm totally baffled by I:C's online configurator thing, and don't understand how it's even supposed to work. But the options for QMK are all kind of speculative for your purposes: Massdrop is working on making a configurator for the CTRL, but (per their KS) it's "alpha-state" right now. Based on the little preview video they have, my suspicion is that it'll turn out pretty nice, but I don't particularly love their older Ergodox configurator (compare to the genuinely excellent one for the Ergodox-EZ). The QMK people are working on a graphical configurator, but it's still very early in development.

Upshot is, the QMK stuff currently has more built-in capability, and is more powerful today if you're comfortable doing some light programming-type tasks; by the time the CTRL is delivered, it'll probably also be true that it has a better GUI configurator, but that's a bit of a gamble.

Techno Trousers:

--- Quote from: Blaise170 on Mon, 09 April 2018, 12:21:55 ---I joined the drop for it. It checks almost every box that I'd want in a custom and also comes in at under $200.

--- End quote ---
+1. I ordered a barebones unit and will populate with some of the 550 box jade switches I ordered from a previous drop. I'm not sure which cap set I'll use yet. Probably Pulse round 3. Oh yeah, I need to join that today.

Findecanor:
So, it is a dark-anodized version of the Input.Club K-Type ... Big deal.
Still does not support ISO, because it is Massdrop it probably still has rattly stabilisers and it has a hideous floating-key design so that you can all

EMBRACE THE LIGHT BLEED!
Light bleed is love. Light bleed is light.
RGB is the mother. RGB is the father.
I have a mission for you! Let's all go to the BACKLIT planet and walk around with NO SUNGLASSES!

BTW. You could have posted a link to it! That name is impossible to google.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page