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geekhack Community => Ergonomics => Topic started by: madereth on Thu, 13 February 2014, 20:42:21

Title: Best Portable Ergonomic Solution
Post by: madereth on Thu, 13 February 2014, 20:42:21

I recently completed an ErgoDox build:

http://adereth.github.io/blog/2014/02/12/building-an-ergodox/

My hope was that by making the case as tight as possible and figuring out a good solution for mounting it on my laptop, I'd have a portable ergonomic keyboard.

Unfortunately, the ErgoDox isn't working out for me for comfort reasons.

I have a couple ideas and I wanted to know if anyone has done anything like this or knows of any commercial solutions:

1. I'm thinking of using the wells from the Kinesis Advantage and building a minimal case around them that mounts/rests nicely on top of my laptop keyboard.  I think this will be the most comfortable, but I'm concerned about the bulk when traveling.
2. I'm also thinking of building a keyboard with a columnar layout similar to the ErgoDox, but using scissor switches.  I know it's blasphemous and I love me some Cherry MXs, but I find the Apple keyboard to be acceptable and I think that a better key arrangement might be enough of an improvement that maintains portability.

Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated!

Title: Re: Best Portable Ergonomic Solution
Post by: vivalarevolución on Thu, 13 February 2014, 21:00:15

Are you familiar with the microTron keyboard (µTron)?  It is split and have Topre switches.  You will have to use an import service to get the keyboard from Japan.

http://xahlee.info/kbd/uTRON_keyboard.html

Title: Re: Best Portable Ergonomic Solution
Post by: lcs on Thu, 13 February 2014, 21:05:09

I think my typematrix 2030 is a very decent keyboard to bring with me. It's a nice RD, it has a decent layout.

Title: Re: Best Portable Ergonomic Solution
Post by: Findecanor on Thu, 13 February 2014, 23:35:58

Building your own scissor-switch keyboard would be hard.. and I would love to see someone do it.
You would need to make custom membranes and a custom bottom of sheet metal to hold the scissors.
Another option would be Cherry ML switches. They are PCB-mounted low-profile mechanical switches that feel a bit like scissor switches, but scratchier... but maybe they could be lubed.  Not as low profile as scissor-switches, but easier to prototype with.

Title: Re: Best Portable Ergonomic Solution
Post by: davkol on Fri, 14 February 2014, 06:25:23

Or ALPS harvested from old laptops.

I think dumblob (https://github.com/dumblob) was working on something like that.