Custom keyboard

[themagicat]

I am looking for my first mehanical keyboard. I figure I might as well go full out. I was thinking of building a keyboard with a grid style layout(no offset). I'm looking at building something with a similar layout to the HHKB. It needs to fully programmable. I was thinking of building it with a system like the thinklight http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkLight . My price cap is around 300 CAD
Thanks for any help

[njbair]

Welcome to GeekHack!

Your ideas are interesting but I'm having a hard time reconciling some of them. For instance, you want a matrix-style layout, but similar to the HHKB. By that do you mean you want it to have empty spaces in the bottom corners? It should be possible to buy an Atomic Keyboard and just build that without the bottom corner keys. Would that suit your needs?

Also, where would you mount the light? Some kind of gooseneck or something?

[themagicat]

Ya, the empty spaces is what I meant. I was thinking of putting the lights in 2 strips along each end, slightly above the keys, if that makes sense. Thanks for the recommendation for the atomic, I'm checking that out now.

[themagicat]

I was thinking a look like this. But with a grid. I'm still not completely sure how I could integrate lights..

[neverused]

I would look into Ortholinear Keyboards, Jack the owner would be a huge help for this project.

http://ortholinearkeyboards.com/

Specifically look at the Planck.  Jack could give you pointers on the pcb, firmware, and how to add lights if that's your thing.

[njbair]

Check out keyboard-layout-editor.com as well as Swill's plate builder. You can start designing what you want and then turn it into a CAD file for use in production.

[themagicat]

Would it be possible to do a custom build with topre switches?

[njbair]

Would it be possible to do a custom build with topre switches?

Short answer: no, not really.

You would need a custom PCB and capacitive controller. You would also need a custom barrel plate to hold the sliders, as well as the sliders themselves. BunnyLake recently introduced the first made-to-order Topre sliders, they have MX-compatible mounts. It looks promising but the first round of buyers have yet to get them in-hand. Theoretically what you want is possible, but none of the components exist and nobody's ever tried it. It would be incredibly expensive and require high skill across many engineering and manufacturing disciplines.