Since I'm finally getting to the point where I might be making physical mistakes, it's probably good to open up my thoughts to some feedback.
The DesignI've started to take a real liking to the HHKB layout, or at least 60% layouts that incorporate the split shift and split backspace into their design. I used to love my Planck's and JD45's split spacebar design and thought that incorporating that into a HHKB layout would be awesome. When thinking about how I incorporate a split space, I realized that you can nicely utilize the keys that most sets would have to cover the 7u space, splitting that 7u into a 1u-2.25u-2.75u-1u pattern. If you utilized the ISO style left shift along with the split right shift, you could get pretty solid keyset compatibility as long as your keyset provides Tsangan/WKL compatibility. For most modern sets, that should be no problem!
So here's my idea for the layout and possible PCB compatibility:
And here's what a board might look like:
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(I'm just hyped waiting for GMK Terminal, don't mind me
)
But as you can see, with the normal number of mods, you can fill out the whole board a have some schweeeeet split space action going on.
CompatibilityI also have concepts for pretty complex but complete bottom row compatibility...
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I'm not sure how many of these combos I would want to actually work into the finalized PCB, as including all of them could make things fairly complex, as well as making the cutouts and hole placement impractical.
The tentative plan in my head is to go with a 7u space compatibility and simply provide more placement options, such as doing 2.25u-1u-1u-2.75u (Inside 1u's) or 1u-2.75u-2.25u-1u (Swapped space lengths). This would give people the freedom to set up the board how they wanted without muddling the PCB design too much.
"So, where is the project right now?" you might ask.TODO:- Finalize compatibility (WIP)
- Finish PCB design (WIP)
- Finalize Plate compatibility
- Get everything fabricated!
Currently, this is just a pet project and I don't have any plans to bring this to a group buy or larger scale production, but if there is enough interest I'd be happy to try and get people rolling with a version of the board.
I do plan on posting all of my files as I finish work on things, however, so theoretically if there isn't enough interest for a full group buy someone would be able to have a single board fabricated.
What do you guys think?! Anything I'm missing or overlooking? Got a better name?! (Please someone have a cooler name..)