I believe its recommended (on Colemak guide) to avoid moving keycaps. You will move the F and J key bumps and find it harder to localize your hand to the keyboard. It also prevents your brain from cheating (reading the keys) instead of training muscle memory.
I understand that but disagree. Moving keycapses may be useful to adapt if you will going to make your job with the new layout immediately, without an option to switch back. Especially when you are living qwerty. Let your friends to type on your kbd to share the good idea about existing of non-qwerties. Let your eyes to love a new layout. BTW Colemak is not so non-qwerty so my opinion it is OK not to move capses for Colemak.
Agreed about the bumps, but with mechanical keyboards it's easy to change keycaps. You can get blank caps with a bump or "deep dish", and also many of the high end sets have a "homing kit" addon that throws in U, D, T, and N homing keys. This covers dvorak, colemak, and workman layouts.
After drooling over the idea of this for years, I finally pulled the trigger and bought one. But, my order was cancelled because Apple had just bought the company to work on gesture tech for the original iPhone.
I'm personally thinking of getting a split keyboard soon, but I'm so split on what I want. Currently using a Preonic and find the ortholinear/compact layout fairly pleasant, so I might just want to get something like the Let's Split. Still, I can't decide if I'd prefer a board with thumb clusters and/or staggered rows (like the Ergodox).
I'd honestly be fine going back to a more traditional layout on a split keyboard (not ortholinear, punctuation keys in normal places, all that stuff), but I've been really unimpressed by what I've seen of those in terms of features. I really want QMK, and I'd also like boards that are flat/don't have a strong tilt since those tend to be a bad ergonomically (in fact, I'd ideally like optional negative tilting). I also want something that's relatively low profile, which is also tricky to find in my experience.
I love it. I added some tilt but it doesn't come with any, and it can be easily flashed with QMK. I just stuck some bumpers on it for the tilt so you could easily go negative. I don't even have mine in a case, so it is very low profile.
Since it does not have a standard function key row, the esc key is not where you would expect it to be (mine is on the extra left bit with the function keys) but otherwise the keys are more or less where you would expect them to be. If you want a dedicated function row there is also this: https://keeb.io/collections/sinc/products/sinc-split-stagger...
I love the split layout and especially the split spacebar, as I made the left spacebar the macro key for my first layer. The rotary encoders are fun too.
For anyone reading this and not keen on DIYing or the quefrency generally or looking for a "normal" layout: checkout Mistel keyboards. I've seen a few on amazon. It's pretty much a normal keyboard layout cut in two.
Anybody have the moonlander and enjoy it? I currently have an ergodox infinity, and want something I can swap to Kailh Choc White switches. The layout and programming seems perfect for me, though I'm disappointing that it's still wired.
I'm new to mechanical and split keyboards, but so far the moonlander has been great. Well, in the beginning it was a bit of a learning curve, but coming from the ergodox that shouldn't be an issue for you. Not being wireless is the only complaint that I have.
I switched to a Moonlander from an Ergodox and am liking it. I ended up not liking their built-in tenting mechanism, so 3D printed my own shims that screw to the back, allowing me to tent the keyboard but also tilt the "wings" upwards. Very comfortable!
One thing I thought I hated about the Ergodox was how inaccessible the small keys on the thumb cluster were, and I thought I would like 3 big keys better. It turns out not to be the case... those keys are useless, but there are a lot of useless keys that are nice to have around (arrows, delete/insert, home/end, pgup/pgdn). I mostly do everything in Emacs and so don't use those keys, but when I'm using non-Emacs software, I do miss them.
(I ultimately decided on Backspace, Alt, Up; Space, Enter, Down as what I use the big thumb keys for. Not sure I love this. This transitioned my backspace key from my right pointer finger to my left thumb, and it broke my muscle memory. I still forget that you can control backspace words to kill them outside of Emacs (where I use C-w for that, which closes your window in every other program).)
I did eventually get parts for both sides. One of the flexible arm clamp tripod mount thingies was not stiff enough to hold the keyboard up, but the other one was great. Since they were both the same part from the same order... it's kind of a crapshoot as to whether or not it will work. But I will continue to experiment.
That’s fantastic. Is your 3D model on Thingiverse or anywhere else? I’ve been thinking about making exactly the same thing to use tripod mounts on the Moonlander.
Honestly, I measured the hole spacing as 19.5mm but it is definitely not quite right because it is tough to get all 4 screws in. I don't have gauge pins to measure it correctly, and the accuracy suffers. But you can get two screws in which was enough for my use.
I uploaded the Fusion 360 file so you can easily correct this.
I would also print it upside down from how it displays on Thingiverse. That way the mount <-> keyboard interface is as smooth as possible. (Well, if you have a smooth print plate, I guess.)
I tried mounting my Ergodox EZ to my chair like you (almost exactly too: 3D printed mount + gorillapod). I found the TRRS cable between the halves to be very very annoying to get in and out of the chair. How did you solve that problem? I once tripped and broke the mount (PLA is brittle) when I went to answer my intercom.
Yeah, there are 4 M2.5 threaded holes on the back, precisely for mounting your own stands. (The subreddit seems to think that some first-party things that screw in there are on the way. In the meantime, I'm happy with my own.)
There are caveats mentioned on the Thing page. I measured the screw spacing imprecisely and you will have to pick your favorite diagonal to put 2 of the 4 screws in ;) You'll also have to mirror the file to print one for the other hand.
I've also been enjoying the Moonlander. I was hesitant about the layout, but spilling liquid on my Kinesis Edge and damaging one of the switches forced my hand. The first few weeks were slow going (I dropped from 140wpm to 50-60), but I adapted fast enough. I haven't measured in a while, but I feel like I'm fully back to speed.
I love the customizability - I started with a layout that was influenced by 3 or 4 other programming layouts I found but have made a dozen or so minor tweaks to it over the last few months into something I (mostly) love.
For coding, it's fantastic and I have no complaints (once I found a system for getting to the bracket keys that work for me, at least). For gaming, however, the tap/hold pairing just doesn't work for me. I had Alt and Esc bound to the same key and could not reliably Alt+Tab or hit Esc in a game for the life of me. I split those out earlier this week and now Esc is better, but Alt is still combined with PgDn which is problematic.....I'm probably going to give up and make it a dedicated Alt key and move PgUp/PgDn to another layer.
I have larger hands, so I wonder if I should have just got the Ergodox and had more thumb keys, but now that I'm used to the Moonlander I have no intention of switching.
I very much enjoy my Moonlander. This is my first split keyboard so I have limited reference points, but the layout still seems quite sensible overall. There's a few things I wish were slightly different, though:
The lowermost of the three thumb keys and the red keys are a bit of a stretch to reach and I already have rather large hands.
The two keys on the bottom row closest to the center are quite comfortable to reach with my thumbs and I use them for extra modifiers. I hardly use the other keys on that row.
I prefer not to use the number row, I have mapped a numpad to another layer instead.
I have the same issue with the ErgodoxEZ (I have small hands) - most of the thumb keys are too far, so I use the lowest index finger keys in their place.
I have a dying kinesics freestyle and the moonlander. The moonlander has been laying idle since I got it because I can’t find the time to learn it. Any advice on how to get started quick? I am switching between a Linux laptop and a macbook
I picked up a Kinesis Advantage2 this year and so far I am very happy with it. Now I can type much longer without any wrist pain. I'm still struggling to reprogram my brain for some keys, but part of that is due to years of bad habits that I'm trying to undo. It was hard to get used to at first but I really like the layout of the thumb clusters.
I like the idea of a split keyboard, but I've never been able to go down that road because I sometimes hit keys with the "wrong" finger - most notably, I need to be able to hit B with my right hand because it's down-left in roguelikes (i.e. Nethack).
What I'd love to see is a "106% keyboard", where a couple columns are duplicated on both the left/right side. Does anybody make such a keyboard?
The thought has occurred to me - and I wouldn't mind a thumb-trackball on the right hand, either. Design in the physical world is well outside my wheelhouse though - is a keyboard an approachable project for somebody who hasn't done woodworking/machining before, or would I be better served working on smaller projects first?
Totally doable as a first project, I'm midway through building my first keyboard with a large number of modifications and it's been a really fun project. The Dactyl Manuform is a great starting point https://github.com/abstracthat/dactyl-manuform
And /r/ErgoMechKeyboards on Reddit is a great community for understanding what you're trying to achieve.
I 3D printed my keyboard. Sometimes I talk about it on HN and have prepared a fairly detailed email about it because people have follow-up questions that require diagrams. I'm too lazy to put it on my blog, but if you want the details just email me and I can probably point you in the right direction.
Building a keyboard is tedious, but not particularly difficult.
Personally, I can hardly think of a better first project. The electronics are dead-simple and the hardware is so much up to personal preference that you can just tinker until you are happy.
(I built my first keyboard about 7 years ago as my first foray into 3D modeling and printing. It went well enough that I used it as my main driver until I got a Keyboardio Model 1 years later.)
You can also build a PCB (or two) pretty easily. That’s what I did when I built my keyboard. You can find the source here: https://github.com/ecopoesis/nek-type-a
The idea isn't entirely new. The TGR Alice is a popular board that has two b keys [0].
The more straightforward approach to get a full extra column would be to just grab a keyboard that already has 7+ columns per side (ie the chimera[1]) and repurpose those to be duplicate keys.
So, this is one of those things that would likely be very painful for a short period of time as you adjust to typing on a split keyboard. I was the same way when I typed on a normal stagggered layout, but being completely unable to do that, brain relatively quickly adjusted to that change.
On my keyboard, B is exactly equidistant between F and J so I couldn't even tell you which finger is correct for it. I wonder how it was decided which side it should go on in a split keyboard?
> On my keyboard, B is exactly equidistant between F and J so I couldn't even tell you which finger is correct for it.
It's not about distance but about logic. If the right index finger does y,h,n and u,j,m then the left index finger does r,f,v and t,g,b. Otherwise your left index only does five letters while your right index does 7.
Depending on how "badly" a staggered keyboard is staggered, some keys can be closer to one hand or another, but it doesn't change what the correct way to touch-type is.
If in doubt, look at where the keys are placed on ergonomic split ortholinear keyboard: the people designing these things tend to know what they're doing.
It's not at all clear that they "know what they're doing" in some way that makes what they're doing "correct."
If they and a majority of their customers learned to type Z with the left little finger, X with the ring finger, etc., that does not magically make that a better way to type than typing Z with the ring finger and X with the middle one.
Quite the contrary: If you bring your hands together naturally in front of you, they form an inverted V. In order to type the bottom row with the little finger on Z, you have to cock your wrist significantly, which is clearly worse from an ergonomics perspective.
If you bring your hands together like hands naturally come together, on the type of staggered keyboard virtually everyone learns to type on, an ortholinear one with be entirely wrong for you on the whole bottom row.
Designing around bad training may be a type of "knowing what they're doing," but it doesn't make it "correct," or even better.
problem is you'd then need to place them quite far apart from each other (while many of the "fixed" split keyboard have each half only slightly tilted) but... From an USB point of view I think this just works?
If you install Karabiner Elements[1] on macOS, all modifier keys suddenly work across all keyboards.
I'm using one "TKL" Apple USB keyboard per hand when I feel like opening my shoulders a bit. Took me all of two minutes to get used to, at a fraction of the cost for enthusiast keyboards. I wonder if there are any ergonomic advantages I'm missing out on.
(Karabiner Elements is a great tool, anyway; I've been using it for a long time to map Caps Lock to something useful for programming.)
> What I'd love to see is a "106% keyboard", where a couple columns are duplicated on both the left/right side. Does anybody make such a keyboard?
I've seen some where the '6' is present on both the left and right-hand side of a split keyboard but '6' is really the one and only key on which there can be a disagreement as to where is the correct placement.
On non-staggered keyboard the '6' is, of course, on the right hand side of the keyboard but on staggered split keyboard it is, very often, on the left hand side.
Most split keyboards in that gallery that do have a numbers row (ie 60% of more, not 40%) do have the '6' correctly located on the right hand side.
Yet most (not all) split-staggered keyboard have the '6' located on the left hand side of the keyboard.
People who learned to touch-type using the "6 with left hand" school have a very hard time adapting to an ortholinear split keyboard. While those who learned to touch-type using the "6 with the right hand" have a much easier time adapting to an ortholinear split keyboard.
Strange. I type with 10 fingers since 20 years or so (self-learned with some programs back then) and actually my only real problem comes from the number row since it just doesn't come to me intuitively, like it's simply wrong (and yes, i don't type numbers really often - that's also why I wouldn't agree with your reasoning that the 6 is responsible for a hard time adapting, since the 6 will simply not be typed very often for non-accountants. If you had said C/V/B, I'd agree). Only now that I've seen the Atreus62 I've come to believe that the number row (and C,V,B) are simply wrong on a standard keyboard. They simply don't work as they should be. At least for me personally.
I have two split keyboard that have "6" on left and on right. It's confusing but not a serious problem after I've get used to. I still mistype the empty space instead of "6" key, but what should I do is just type it on other hand.
.. or you could just switch and fix your bad behaviors.
I would say that as a daily Advantage user for right about 20 years, it's not a keyboard to play games with and it's not a keyboard to use for a very heavy kb+mouse software situation (like cad or photoshop). In those situations you often keep your dominant hand on your mouse at all times and your non-dominant glued to the keyboard. For those situations I have a fairly standard 65% board on my desk. But for coding, emails, etc. That all happens on the advantage.
I hit air for the first week with a let's split, but it chilled out. I'm probably about as fast on a macbook keyboard two+ years on even though I use it way less.
You can unlearn the habit with time. Also, I've played roguelikes (such as CDDA) using dvorak and no numpad. Even with the movement keys spread out, it's not bad. Helps that they're turn-based games. I remap all the keys in Minetest and Xonotic.
I was never taught how to type... I'm fast enough, 120-140wpm depending on the keyboard and what I'm typing. I think the speed came from playing online games and needing to communicate quickly before suffering the consequences of not controlling my character.
The end result is that I have a strange typing pattern and I use the "wrong" fingers for keys.
I share this experience and my typing on a normal keyboard is still only using a few fingers and moving them around all over the place. On a split keyboard even, i still 'misplace' some fingers because my pinky finger is so short i can't hit 'p' key comfortably with it.
Still, I think having a split keyboard has overall been a benefit to my typing experience and type faster on it than I could on a normal keyboard.
Cool site. I didn't notice this much selection last year. I just ended buying a Kinesis Advantage 2.
I'm very happy with the advantage 2. I'm curious about boards with smaller keys, more compact layout, or extra keys in the same space.
The advantage 2 gives you easy access to the arrow keys with no loss of access to other keys. Eliminates the whole efficient arrow usage problem, or gives you more keys for commands if you use hjkl.
The advantage 2 is not a be all end all fix for hand / wrist pain. Consider starting a hand/wrist exercise regime if you have pain first. It could help enough to not need to buy a board.
I have been looking for a keyboard, but fails to find one.
- ergonomics
- wireless (bluetooth or a tiny USB dongle is OK)
- mechanical keys
- mac cmd-key
- below $200 USD
I am not sure why it is so difficult to find one like that :-(
If you give up the wireless portion of that, you have a ton of options. I have an ortho keyboard, wired, and don't mind the wire at all... for travel it's easy enough (my Preonic keyboard from Massdrop came with a case) and the standard USB-C cable is easily detachable and stows nicely. Plus, it doesn't require a battery.
I have a wireless mouse (G Pro Wireless) that is good enough but charging it is pretty annoying.
I recently developed a high end wireless ErgoDox keyboard [1] though I'm working on a more affordable version that will be announced in March/April. It will be around $200 with all the components (some minor assembly required). If you would like to be notified, please subscribe to my mailing list [2] for "ErgoDox Wireless Lite". If you are interested in details, you can also reach me via email (see profile).
Do you also offer assembly services? As someone who recently been unable to work on electronic components (small parts, easily swallowable, in a small apartment = danger), I'd highly appreciate it
For the planned low end version, assembly will just be installing switches/keycaps (no soldering). A similar assembly service will be available for people who just want to receive a complete keyboard.
I'm surprised the original[1] MS Natural Keyboard is not listed in the mass-market page. Maybe it's because it's not made anymore. I still have mine, it's years old, but it still works and I still love it, it seems to be the perfect angle for my hands.
I couldn't touch-type until I got a Microsoft Natural Keyboard (the very first version listed). Eventually I got its successor, the Elite, then the 4000. Interestingly enough, the touch-typing skills that I didn't develop until getting the MS Natural Keyboard translate back just fine to regular keyboards.
I bought a 4000 when I decided it was finally time to learn to touch type properly so that I'd be force to use the right hands for each half (I tended to use my dominant hand far too much). It worked great for that, and now I use a kinesis advantage, which I love.
I use my Ergodox full-time and I love it, but I feel this way about an Atreus I just picked up: there are only a few keys, and some are inaccessible (!) so I'm stuck putting stuff like colons and quotation marks in a layer. Feels bad.
I code full time on an Iris. Hold/tap is huge for me for every kind of bracket or brace, just like the spacecadet keyboard that came before us. I have my layer modifiers under F, D, and S which then flip the right hand to Vim style arrows, a number pad, and a symbol pad.
From browsing r/ErgoMechKeyboards and GeekHack, I think the main group of people making these custom keyboards are devs actually. Consider how foot pedals are a long-standing emacs thing :)
I use a 40% layout on a custom board with palm keys for coding and writing in LaTeX mainly (like the Model 01 with 3x6 alphas 3 thumbs 1 palm on each side). It took some effort to re-train, but I'll never go back to a keyboard without palm keys now, I love the setup. They palm keys are perfect for activating the layers for arrows/navigation or numpad. But typing style plays a role too, it's definitely probably not everyone!
Agreed! I tried all kinds of keyboards, and intensely dislike all these smaller ones, which I find absolutely unusable for anything more complex than typing email.
Some people quite visibly disagree with me
I eventually settled on a kinesis ergo edge, which I really like.
I know this is super off-topic but I’ve needed to design this web experience myself over the past few years (and ended up making visitors use Google Sheets with filters they adjust).
It seems you've got some property/binary/numeric filters already in there and if you could load the data from a js/json file, this UI could be entirely open source and customizable. I’d just fork and put my own data, set my own sliders and good to go.
Just a thought if you ever wanted to open source it. It would be a superb experience for many developers.
I own or have owned several of these. The Kinesis Advantage 2 is the only one I regularly recommend. It's very expensive, but also refined, thoroughly tested, and highly customizable.
It did not take me long to adjust. I'm now as fast on the Advantage as on any mechanical standard.
I’ve got one as well but I haven’t quite managed to make the switch. The normal keys are no problem, but what keeps me from using it full time is all the special keys, i.e navigation (arrows/home/end/etc) and shortcuts (command/option/ctrl).
I’m used to flying through editors by muscle memory so it feels quite painful to stumble on the new keyboard. Half the time I have to look at the old keyboard just to figure out what the actual keys I wanted are.
Any suggestions to get over the hump? I’ve tried some typing games like Epistory but they normally focus on normal keys. I haven’t see one for these special keys.
I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts. I can share what worked for me.
Remap CapsLock to Windows/Super. Mirror Ctrl and Alt from the left thumb cluster onto the right thumb cluster, so you have Ctrl and Alt in reach of each thumb.
Don't be afraid to customize special keys and punctuation. Especially that big Delete key under your left thumb. That's prime real estate.
If you have larger hands, buy some of the stick-on palm rest pads. They'll help bring your wrists to the right angles.
I've used split keyboards for ages, and until recently had a Kinesis Gaming Edge that I really liked and still highly recommend. But what I found was that I was "freezing" while typing: instead of typing smoothly, it felt like every other sentence I'd pause for a sec and then keep going. After watching Thomas/chyrosran22's keyboard reviews on YouTube and his discussions of why ergo doesn't work for him, I realized why the 'freezing' was occurring: my brain was getting hooked when the key it wanted to hit was on the 'wrong' hand.
I switched recently to a Keychron K4 (with about half the switches swapped out) and am now just being more conscientious about keeping my wrists at a natural angle than I am about hitting keys with the right fingers. The result: no more freezing, my wrists are happier than ever, and I feel like my typing has gained 10wpm. I do miss the extra macro keys, though—might have to get a macro pad at some point...
Those more fancy, niche keyboards like Moonlander and UHK seem to offer great configurability, but simply have too few keys for me. My wrists like separate arrows, home, end, page up & down keys and not needing to change layers or press and hold four-key combinations :)
I use UHK. Note that it does not have the modules yet and the reason I switched to this when my previous vessel died was the modules.
As far as it goes they are postponing tease of the modules on every release date.
I am looking forward to the trackball and the key luster. Although now I am considering waiting for a bunch of reviews to come out before paying for those two modules.
I switched to using a Kinesis Freestyle 2 with the tenting kit. It has made a big difference for me, a lot of the pain I was feeling when using other keyboards has gone away.
I am so intrigued by some of these minimalist keyboards. I tried to use a 60% keyboard but I found using the extra layers to be difficult to adjust to. On paper it sounds good, move your fingers less, just use a layer. But in practice it got old fast.
I never realized how often I needed to press the ` key until I started using a 60% keyboard.
I have the ez ergodox but it is slightly big for my hands. I end up making typos once in a while. What is a good keyset for tiny hands? Or a smaller split keyboard.
This is super cool! I definitely could have used this when I found a photo of a split keyboard on aliexpress and it turned out to be the redox manuform. Relatedly, this site is missing the redox manuform
I wonder if anyone shares my setup. I lie horizontally with a monitor suspended 3ft directly above. I use a logitech trackball on my right hand at my side. I find this position comfortable for long hours and don't experience the backpain that I did for years.
One wrinkle is the keyboard - it rests on my upper thighs, and I find I'm rolling my shoulders forward to type which is less than ideal. I experimented with split keyboards but haven't found an ideal solution yet. A major problem is switching from the trackball back to the keyboard. Also needing to keep the trackball out wide to allow space for the split keyboard on my right side.
A friend of mine cut up her Kinesis Advantage to put a big trackball right in the middle. (There's enough space in the housing, especially if you are not afraid to cut and move the circuit board.)
A similar position might work for you?
I use a standing desk to be in a similar (but upright) position, because sitting is also bad for me.
I have the X-Bows. It's my first ergo keyboard, and I really like it so far. I even use it for gaming. They just released one with a Mac layout, so I might be picking up a second one.
Awesome! I wish I'd seen this last year when I was in the market. Nonetheless I'm happy with my Dygma Raise (I mostly wanted split, RGB lights, with not too few keys). I wasn't ready for an ortholinear layout but hope to venture in that direction for my next purchase.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 202 ms ] threadI think people take pictures with Qwerty to make them more approachable.
QMK is a wonderful piece of software.
Here's a set with a homing kit. https://novelkeys.xyz/products/kam-superuser-gb?variant=3789... https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/3099/8088/products/homing_...
It has even more keycaps than usual!
After drooling over the idea of this for years, I finally pulled the trigger and bought one. But, my order was cancelled because Apple had just bought the company to work on gesture tech for the original iPhone.
I'm personally thinking of getting a split keyboard soon, but I'm so split on what I want. Currently using a Preonic and find the ortholinear/compact layout fairly pleasant, so I might just want to get something like the Let's Split. Still, I can't decide if I'd prefer a board with thumb clusters and/or staggered rows (like the Ergodox).
I'd honestly be fine going back to a more traditional layout on a split keyboard (not ortholinear, punctuation keys in normal places, all that stuff), but I've been really unimpressed by what I've seen of those in terms of features. I really want QMK, and I'd also like boards that are flat/don't have a strong tilt since those tend to be a bad ergonomically (in fact, I'd ideally like optional negative tilting). I also want something that's relatively low profile, which is also tricky to find in my experience.
I love it. I added some tilt but it doesn't come with any, and it can be easily flashed with QMK. I just stuck some bumpers on it for the tilt so you could easily go negative. I don't even have mine in a case, so it is very low profile.
Since it does not have a standard function key row, the esc key is not where you would expect it to be (mine is on the extra left bit with the function keys) but otherwise the keys are more or less where you would expect them to be. If you want a dedicated function row there is also this: https://keeb.io/collections/sinc/products/sinc-split-stagger...
I love the split layout and especially the split spacebar, as I made the left spacebar the macro key for my first layer. The rotary encoders are fun too.
One thing I thought I hated about the Ergodox was how inaccessible the small keys on the thumb cluster were, and I thought I would like 3 big keys better. It turns out not to be the case... those keys are useless, but there are a lot of useless keys that are nice to have around (arrows, delete/insert, home/end, pgup/pgdn). I mostly do everything in Emacs and so don't use those keys, but when I'm using non-Emacs software, I do miss them.
(I ultimately decided on Backspace, Alt, Up; Space, Enter, Down as what I use the big thumb keys for. Not sure I love this. This transitioned my backspace key from my right pointer finger to my left thumb, and it broke my muscle memory. I still forget that you can control backspace words to kill them outside of Emacs (where I use C-w for that, which closes your window in every other program).)
TL;DR: it's fine! But still not perfect.
I did eventually get parts for both sides. One of the flexible arm clamp tripod mount thingies was not stiff enough to hold the keyboard up, but the other one was great. Since they were both the same part from the same order... it's kind of a crapshoot as to whether or not it will work. But I will continue to experiment.
Honestly, I measured the hole spacing as 19.5mm but it is definitely not quite right because it is tough to get all 4 screws in. I don't have gauge pins to measure it correctly, and the accuracy suffers. But you can get two screws in which was enough for my use.
I uploaded the Fusion 360 file so you can easily correct this.
I would also print it upside down from how it displays on Thingiverse. That way the mount <-> keyboard interface is as smooth as possible. (Well, if you have a smooth print plate, I guess.)
And how did you bolt those things on? Are there screw holes on the back?
Here is a Thingiverse link: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4769961
There are caveats mentioned on the Thing page. I measured the screw spacing imprecisely and you will have to pick your favorite diagonal to put 2 of the 4 screws in ;) You'll also have to mirror the file to print one for the other hand.
I love the customizability - I started with a layout that was influenced by 3 or 4 other programming layouts I found but have made a dozen or so minor tweaks to it over the last few months into something I (mostly) love.
For coding, it's fantastic and I have no complaints (once I found a system for getting to the bracket keys that work for me, at least). For gaming, however, the tap/hold pairing just doesn't work for me. I had Alt and Esc bound to the same key and could not reliably Alt+Tab or hit Esc in a game for the life of me. I split those out earlier this week and now Esc is better, but Alt is still combined with PgDn which is problematic.....I'm probably going to give up and make it a dedicated Alt key and move PgUp/PgDn to another layer.
I have larger hands, so I wonder if I should have just got the Ergodox and had more thumb keys, but now that I'm used to the Moonlander I have no intention of switching.
The lowermost of the three thumb keys and the red keys are a bit of a stretch to reach and I already have rather large hands.
The two keys on the bottom row closest to the center are quite comfortable to reach with my thumbs and I use them for extra modifiers. I hardly use the other keys on that row.
I prefer not to use the number row, I have mapped a numpad to another layer instead.
I'm looking into Kyria as an alternative.
What I'd love to see is a "106% keyboard", where a couple columns are duplicated on both the left/right side. Does anybody make such a keyboard?
And /r/ErgoMechKeyboards on Reddit is a great community for understanding what you're trying to achieve.
Building a keyboard is tedious, but not particularly difficult.
(I built my first keyboard about 7 years ago as my first foray into 3D modeling and printing. It went well enough that I used it as my main driver until I got a Keyboardio Model 1 years later.)
https://imgur.com/a/By9YN2q
Is made on wood, to being on the style of MS Ergo but not curved (yet I think it feel nice as is).
https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/9wjpg0...
The more straightforward approach to get a full extra column would be to just grab a keyboard that already has 7+ columns per side (ie the chimera[1]) and repurpose those to be duplicate keys.
[0] https://i.redd.it/9kyeyht1eqy11.jpg
[1] https://github.com/GlenPickle/Chimera
It's not about distance but about logic. If the right index finger does y,h,n and u,j,m then the left index finger does r,f,v and t,g,b. Otherwise your left index only does five letters while your right index does 7.
Depending on how "badly" a staggered keyboard is staggered, some keys can be closer to one hand or another, but it doesn't change what the correct way to touch-type is.
If in doubt, look at where the keys are placed on ergonomic split ortholinear keyboard: the people designing these things tend to know what they're doing.
Which, if you're right-handed, makes some amount of sense.
If they and a majority of their customers learned to type Z with the left little finger, X with the ring finger, etc., that does not magically make that a better way to type than typing Z with the ring finger and X with the middle one.
Quite the contrary: If you bring your hands together naturally in front of you, they form an inverted V. In order to type the bottom row with the little finger on Z, you have to cock your wrist significantly, which is clearly worse from an ergonomics perspective.
If you bring your hands together like hands naturally come together, on the type of staggered keyboard virtually everyone learns to type on, an ortholinear one with be entirely wrong for you on the whole bottom row.
Designing around bad training may be a type of "knowing what they're doing," but it doesn't make it "correct," or even better.
Alt doesn't seem to work though.
I'm using one "TKL" Apple USB keyboard per hand when I feel like opening my shoulders a bit. Took me all of two minutes to get used to, at a fraction of the cost for enthusiast keyboards. I wonder if there are any ergonomic advantages I'm missing out on.
(Karabiner Elements is a great tool, anyway; I've been using it for a long time to map Caps Lock to something useful for programming.)
[1] https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org
I now feel less guilty for having two 60% mechanical keyboards. :)
I've seen some where the '6' is present on both the left and right-hand side of a split keyboard but '6' is really the one and only key on which there can be a disagreement as to where is the correct placement.
On non-staggered keyboard the '6' is, of course, on the right hand side of the keyboard but on staggered split keyboard it is, very often, on the left hand side.
Most split keyboards in that gallery that do have a numbers row (ie 60% of more, not 40%) do have the '6' correctly located on the right hand side.
Yet most (not all) split-staggered keyboard have the '6' located on the left hand side of the keyboard.
People who learned to touch-type using the "6 with left hand" school have a very hard time adapting to an ortholinear split keyboard. While those who learned to touch-type using the "6 with the right hand" have a much easier time adapting to an ortholinear split keyboard.
I would say that as a daily Advantage user for right about 20 years, it's not a keyboard to play games with and it's not a keyboard to use for a very heavy kb+mouse software situation (like cad or photoshop). In those situations you often keep your dominant hand on your mouse at all times and your non-dominant glued to the keyboard. For those situations I have a fairly standard 65% board on my desk. But for coding, emails, etc. That all happens on the advantage.
For about a week I was smashing the blank space between the halves but then it just suddenly clicked and I’ve been fine since.
For Nethack and games in general, I have a cheap 'normal' keyboard.
The end result is that I have a strange typing pattern and I use the "wrong" fingers for keys.
(I also hit 'a' with my left thumb...)
My pinkies are completely unused, except for right pinky on enter.
No idea how well I'd adapt to 'proper' typing!
(After all these years, my left thumb is notably more flexible than my right!)
Still, I think having a split keyboard has overall been a benefit to my typing experience and type faster on it than I could on a normal keyboard.
I'm very happy with the advantage 2. I'm curious about boards with smaller keys, more compact layout, or extra keys in the same space.
The advantage 2 gives you easy access to the arrow keys with no loss of access to other keys. Eliminates the whole efficient arrow usage problem, or gives you more keys for commands if you use hjkl.
The advantage 2 is not a be all end all fix for hand / wrist pain. Consider starting a hand/wrist exercise regime if you have pain first. It could help enough to not need to buy a board.
https://youtu.be/EiRC80FJbHU
The old Advantage has served me well, but it's USB implementation seems to interact really badly with some modern laptops.
I really liked the arrow key placement though. They are badly placed on mainstream keyboards for touch typists.
With this extra space there's no problem putting all 4 arrow keys, \|, Delete, `~, and Esc all within home row reach.
I am not sure why it is so difficult to find one like that :-(
I have a wireless mouse (G Pro Wireless) that is good enough but charging it is pretty annoying.
[1] https://www.slicemk.com/pages/ergodox-wireless
[2] https://xudongz.us17.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=2e46b2d0347...
For the planned low end version, assembly will just be installing switches/keycaps (no soldering). A similar assembly service will be available for people who just want to receive a complete keyboard.
Even though it is absolutely enormous.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_ergonomic_keyboards#...
The original is notable just for how enormous it is.
I have a keyboardio model 01(this: https://shop.keyboard.io/collections/model-01-keycaps/produc...)
And even this feels like I'm having to function dive into weird chords of keys to get some of the functionality that I want (arrow keys, mostly).
Are people just not actually writing code with these ultra minimalist things?
Space cadet hold/tap shifts details here, from a soft remap I used to use: https://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/a-modern-space-cadet/#s17...
I use a 40% layout on a custom board with palm keys for coding and writing in LaTeX mainly (like the Model 01 with 3x6 alphas 3 thumbs 1 palm on each side). It took some effort to re-train, but I'll never go back to a keyboard without palm keys now, I love the setup. They palm keys are perfect for activating the layers for arrows/navigation or numpad. But typing style plays a role too, it's definitely probably not everyone!
I eventually settled on a kinesis ergo edge, which I really like.
It seems you've got some property/binary/numeric filters already in there and if you could load the data from a js/json file, this UI could be entirely open source and customizable. I’d just fork and put my own data, set my own sliders and good to go.
Just a thought if you ever wanted to open source it. It would be a superb experience for many developers.
It did not take me long to adjust. I'm now as fast on the Advantage as on any mechanical standard.
I’m used to flying through editors by muscle memory so it feels quite painful to stumble on the new keyboard. Half the time I have to look at the old keyboard just to figure out what the actual keys I wanted are.
Any suggestions to get over the hump? I’ve tried some typing games like Epistory but they normally focus on normal keys. I haven’t see one for these special keys.
Remap CapsLock to Windows/Super. Mirror Ctrl and Alt from the left thumb cluster onto the right thumb cluster, so you have Ctrl and Alt in reach of each thumb.
Don't be afraid to customize special keys and punctuation. Especially that big Delete key under your left thumb. That's prime real estate.
If you have larger hands, buy some of the stick-on palm rest pads. They'll help bring your wrists to the right angles.
I switched recently to a Keychron K4 (with about half the switches swapped out) and am now just being more conscientious about keeping my wrists at a natural angle than I am about hitting keys with the right fingers. The result: no more freezing, my wrists are happier than ever, and I feel like my typing has gained 10wpm. I do miss the extra macro keys, though—might have to get a macro pad at some point...
Have you seen any keyboard with a similar layout to Kinesis Edge but with attachments similar to those that UHK has (https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/product/keycluster).
Those more fancy, niche keyboards like Moonlander and UHK seem to offer great configurability, but simply have too few keys for me. My wrists like separate arrows, home, end, page up & down keys and not needing to change layers or press and hold four-key combinations :)
As far as it goes they are postponing tease of the modules on every release date.
I am looking forward to the trackball and the key luster. Although now I am considering waiting for a bunch of reviews to come out before paying for those two modules.
I am so intrigued by some of these minimalist keyboards. I tried to use a 60% keyboard but I found using the extra layers to be difficult to adjust to. On paper it sounds good, move your fingers less, just use a layer. But in practice it got old fast.
I never realized how often I needed to press the ` key until I started using a 60% keyboard.
Use for programming and occasional game.
Amazing help for my inner shoulder pain. Highly recommend.
Keys are squishy and I loath them. Error rate is much higher. Regret brown keys.
Arrow keys are oddly mashed in and unpleasant to use. VIM reduces need, but still.
Going back to non split makes my shoulders tense up again.
Took about about a week to get used to keyboard.
Absolutely recommend split keyboard if you have broad shoulders. I will try a different model on the next one.
Is there somewhere to buy it, or is it discontinued / one off group buy? I've linked it to here for the moment: https://www.taehatypes.com/alice
One wrinkle is the keyboard - it rests on my upper thighs, and I find I'm rolling my shoulders forward to type which is less than ideal. I experimented with split keyboards but haven't found an ideal solution yet. A major problem is switching from the trackball back to the keyboard. Also needing to keep the trackball out wide to allow space for the split keyboard on my right side.
A similar position might work for you?
I use a standing desk to be in a similar (but upright) position, because sitting is also bad for me.
Hers was a rather more professional looking job. The trackball was about 8 cm in diameter and sunk right in.
(She also hacked up the kernel driver to make horizontal rotation be interpreted as the scroll wheel.)