So here I am, feeling inspiration from the many awesome geekhackers I've been reading about for a month. I'm joining the party by building my own custom build.
A quick backstory: I switched to dvorak three or four years ago. I've know about mechanical keyboard but never been interested in them. That was until a month and a half ago when I stumbled upon this world of custom built keyboards (found the ergodox then geekhack). Now the idea of designing and building my own keyboard excites me (as of now I still have no interest in owning a 'standard' mechanical keyboard).
My goal: A split ergonomic programmable keyboard.
I'm doing my best to keep it as economical as possible without cutting too many corners.
So far I'm solid on:
- Gateron Browns
- Teensy 2.0
- DSA PBT blanks
- columnar stagger
- split design (hopefully two physical parts)
- hand wired
- integrated trackpoint
I'm thinking the following but open to change:
- 40%-60% layout. Currently
http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/ca1d0773781f4a4c737b505141caffe7 but the 'bkspace' and left 'ctl shift' don't save correctly, you'll need to highlight them and push up arrow a few times. There is also a box of keys that still need a home.
- Two physical halfs connected by...something (possibly hdmi but that might be pretty tough to hand wire...but I do _want_ it to be detachable.
- Acrylic case cut at the local Makerspace.
- I also think it would be cool to make a detatcheable bottom layer to make the two halves usable on my lap. I'd have to settle for a fixed angle and such But this is just an idea...not needed.
- Calling it the Shergo v1.0 ...cause it's shaymdev's ergo board...I know...kinda lame.
Current blockers/things I'm trying to figure out (this is where I could use some help!)
- Thumb cluster. I'm not convinced of my current cluster. I want thumbs to be primarily responsible for the pinky's old jobs (modifiers, backspace, enter, etc)...which means a bunch of keys. I'm a keyboard shortcut guy so I want to still be able to use keyboard shortcuts without problem (like ctrl-shift-esc, ctrl-tab, shift-tab, ctrl-arrows, etc)
- Trackpoint location/buttons (to include or not to include dedicated buttons).
- Whether or not to include /=\ on the primary layer somehow (probably one more column on the right pinky)
- Case design. Probably acrylic layers... So maybe that won't be too much new effort once I've got my plate figured out.
I'm planning on using swill's plate builder to get the main key clusters and manually editing the output to handle my rotated keys and the pointing stick and stuff.
Any feedback would be appreciated!
update: link fixed...silly xkcd substitutions plugin changed keyboard to leopard.