Awesome work so far!
I’d love to hear more details about your design goals and process (for instance, how did you decide how many keys to include and their positioning? do you have a plan for the assignment of keys to outputs? did you ever consider angling the two halves inward, or tenting them, before deciding on this current flat parallel setup?), and also hear a review of how it is to use now that it’s been built.
The lighter-force MX red switches sound way too light for me: what made you want to have such low-force switches?
Definitely keep us posted on how the chording setup works out, etc.
The layout design was based on taking the Velotype layout and adding keys until I had enough to cover all normal keyboard keys. I decided not to angle the sides because the parallel is actually more comfortable, it just requires a wider keyboard, which I didn't mind. I decided not to tent the sides because that would have made the whole thing more difficult to make, and it had already taken long enough.
The reason for the super light switches is that I trust the designers of the Velotype that when you are pressing many keys at once constantly with normal key switches it gets tiring, they have much more chording keyboard experience than I do. So I took their idea of using low force switches, although I couldn't get mine quite as light as theirs, but they still activate with a very light touch.
Low force switches aren't optimal for normal typing (I accidentally hit keys all the time) but for chording the stroking motion is actually a totally different movement which doesn't cause problems with low force keys. It is more of an up and down movement of the hands pushed from the forearms, rearranging the fingers between strokes. The only benefit for normal typing is that they are way less tiring, I typed that entire 3000 word article over 3 hours with less fatigue than it took me to write this forum post.
