Nice. It’s a good idea to make the stagger a bit more aggressive than on the Ergodox for a flat keyboard. What are you going to make your keyboard out of? Have you tried prototyping it?
Thanks jacobolus! The stagger of the ergodox design is not that bad on the alphas, but the little fingers... Uncomfortable. I prototyped only on paper. The plan is some kind of an aluminum plate on top and bottom, and with acrylic or wodden spacer in that metal sandwich.
Having done a board with similarities to your proposed layout, I think that you might benefit by a few more keys under your alphas that could be hit by either your thumbs or fingers. There's room and radial thumb fan establishes the minimum footprint anyways.
Also, I can't overstress testing the radial keys placement. I got mine right after a lot of adjustments and while it works for me, it wouldn't necessary fit all hands.
As suggested above, now is the time to also test the angles for the effects they have on both wrist pronation and ulnar deviation. The plan looks good overall.
I'll be looking forward to see this progress.
I worked a lot on the thumb section, and I found some suprising regularity on the layout. I dont know if it is my hands or just found a Saint Grail of the keyboard layouts. I'll explain it later.
I want to materialize this beauty in less than a month. If everything goes smooth of course. If everything goes well, and everything is done, I'll post the worklog.
Welcome to Geekhack qisqaqas! I find your layout to be very sensible. If I were you I might want to add an additional modifier key unless you intend to use keys that do different things when you "tap" vs. "hold" them.
I would suggest you print the layout on paper and try mock-typing on the paper prototypes. The one thing you might want to adjust could be the angle of the halves - which would depend on your shoulder width.
Thank you, Findecanor!
One thing I didn't mention the budget (I have the memory of a gold fish
). Main goal is to be cost effective. Signature Plastics offer 54 1x1 keys for 25$, and thats all I can work with. Kind of a challenge, but I like it.
I did a lot of printing (I feel my printer hates me) and found this very satisfying.
Good looking layout, I like the stagger and general placement a lot. Like a 60% Atreus
I agree with kurplop here. You can print out the layout and test type on the paper to see how the thumb key placement works for you. As for the splay angle, with a connected board you can move it closer / further away to change the angle of the hands to the board, so it's best to find the most comfortable distance and the most comfortable angle at that distance for you.
I found having an arrow and edit cluster in the space at the bottom of each side to be really handy, but you may have to adjust your outer thumb key angles / positions to fit them.
I'm a big fan of the arrow cluster since I saw the Axios keyboard.
It's both a financial and some kind of a comforability issue, that I didn't include this.
If somebody can name a place where I can buy cheap PBT keycaps (blank preferred) then maybe I change my mind.
And now about he layout. I tried a lot of stagger versions but I found this the most comfortable. I don't now it's a coincidence or not but as you see the clusters of the invidual fingers top corner is lining up. I only used 15° rotation, I highlighted with red.
The wirst placement is good in my opinion, but the wirsts are not straight if you move your keyboard too close or too far from yourself. It is the curse of the fixed angle of the halves.
EDIT: another restriction on key number: I'll use Pro Micro microcontrollers, because it's dirt-cheap. First thing will be is overwriting arduino and use a tmk keyboard software fork.