Ergonomic, split and other weird keyboards
Posts must be of/about keyboards that have a clear delineation between the left and right halves of the keyboard, column stagger, or both. This includes one-handed (one half doesn't exist, what clearer delineation is that!?)
i.e. no regular non-split¹ row-stagger and no non-split¹ ortholinear²
¹ split meaning a separation of the halves, whether fixed in place or entirely separate, both are fine.
² ortholinear meaning keys layed out in a grid
No excessive posting/"shilling" for commercial purposes. Vendors are permitted to promote their products/services but keep it to a minimum and use the [vendor] flair. Posts that appear to be marketing without being transparent about it will be removed.
This subreddit is not a marketplace, please post on r/mechmarket or other relevant marketplace.
Hi folks, I've been working on this keyboard pretty much since January of this year, and I've finally got it to the point that I can call it done! If you'd like to build one, all files are available here.
This is an MX-based keyboard, 36 keys with integrated trackball. The github page has a bunch more details. I also have a choc version in dev using the same style that's based off the Trinidox.
Let me know what you think!
Oh man, what are you doing to me? I have almost everything together to build a Charybis and have procrastinated the hell out of that project and now I need to have new stuff printed and restart my whole procrastination routine?
No seriously, this is one extremely fine and finished looking keyboard.
Can the pi PICO accommodate two trackball halves?
Do you have a picture or video of you typing on it?
I am very interested how far you have to move your hand to reach the trackball.
haha sorry! Decisions are tough...I say build both :-)
I'm not quite sure what you mean by two trackball halves...do you mean a trackball on both the left and right? Totally possible if that's what you mean since each side has a uC...but I think I'm not quite catching your question.
I'll get some pics of hand on home row and hand on trackball. I aim for it to be equivalent to a "row shift", meaning when using the trackball, the fingers rest comfortably on the top row which then become the mouse buttons. This works well if you use HJKL for VIM style arrow keys since it can all be on the same nav layer: home row for arrows, top row for mouse buttons. Take a peek at the Trinidox page I linked to...it has pictures of home row and trackball use and should be very similar to the flow-MX36.
Thanks for your interest! Keep me posted...would love to see another build in the wild!
You were correct, I would like to have one two trackballs, one per halve.
The pics would still be great, but your method of moving the whole hand up one row sounds, without ever having tried a contoured keyboard with integrated trackball, as the best placement solution I have seen so far.