deskthority

I've happily typed on a Kinesis Advantage for years, but am doing a lot of carry-on-only travel, and I can't say that keyboard is exactly space efficient = )

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find much in the ergonomic, space efficient wireless keyboard market.

The closest I could find was this "iClever" bluetooth folding keyboard ($30 on Amazon, clones under many brands):



The bluetooth is great, and magnets fold it securely in half, making it very portable (about 10 x 15 cm, 13mm thick).

However, I can't bring myself to tolerate its tiny pinky backspace, esc behind function key modifier, or half-sized braces.
I looked into custom keyboards, but everything I've seen uses mechanical switches, which seem like they'll be too bulky for this application.
(Even Cherry MLs are about 11mm for the bare switch, which would mean a folded arrangement twice as thick as this iClever.)

I couldn't find any posts from anyone here actually making a custom scissor-switch keyboard.

@courtesi floated the idea two years ago: keyboards-f2/does-anyone-know-how-expen ... 12422.html but that's all I could find.

I disassembled the iClever to figure out how complex it'd be to do.
This keyboard is, from back-to-front, an grippy covering, plastic case, a metal backing plate, membrane, and then scissors and key caps:



(grip and plastic casing removed, and as well as few scissors and keycaps)

I can't tell exactly what's going on in the membrane:



Why do the traces extend all the way to the edge? (Ease of manufacturing?)
It looks like there are multiple sheets with traces, though I couldn't peel them apart to verify.

The circuit looks fairly straightforward (one connector goes to this half of the keyboard, the other goes across to the other half of the keyboard, which also contains the battery):



So, how difficult would it be to make something like this?

+ Scissors + switches: Can I source these directly somehow, or do I just buy some cheap keyboards from Alibaba and scavenge the mechanisms?

+ Membrane: Seems doable, based on discussion in @courtesi's thread. Hand-drawing conductive ink could be tolerable, especially if I get a microcontroller w/ tons of IO pins such that keys can be wired up directly with no need to do fancy row/col scanning.

+ Backing sheet: It looks like iClever's scissors are mounted on sheet metal that has been punched and then little clips folded up. I'm assuming that only makes sense at scale. For a custom layout, would an SLS 3d print be able to hold the scissor mechanisms in place? Or are there scissors that can be mounted directly to a flat surface?

+ Hardware + Software: The Mitosis keyboard ( https://imgur.com/a/mwTFj ) has broken a lot of ground on this front, hardest part for me will likely be to find a copy of Altium PCB software that I can use here in Australia. = )


Alternative solutions:

+ Just build something w/ low-profile mechanical switches (Cherry ML? Whatever Razor is using in their iPad Pro case?) and get over the folding / super-portability thing.

+ Find the iClever people and see if they'd be willing to do a small run of a variant layout, then pony up $10k ($100k? I have no idea).


What do ya'll think?

Do the left and right space keys send a different keycode?

I have started using the Iris recently, and I love the ortholinear layout, the thumb keys but I find the mechanical keys too high (even though i use low profile Kailh keys). This is definitely something I am getting adjusted to, but the iris is a lot less portable than keyboards like the one you have shown here.

If they do send different keycodes, I would just put backspace and other small keys here on different layers that are activated by the left spacebar.

This particular specimen is in pieces, so I can't check whether the separate space keys send different keycodes.
That's a great idea, though!
Using one as a modifier to map symbols and backspace to the full-sized keys could work, though it might mess up my muscle memory on other machines =P

Interesting to hear your experience w/ the Iris --- that low profile mechanical switches are still too high.
Looks like the stacked PCB design doesn't help in the vertical dept. either (same issue with the Mitosis keyboard).

I haven't reached out to any manufacturers yet, but I'll put it on my TODO list, since given the lack of activity on this post it seems like there's not a lot of DIY experience in the low-profile niche.

Interesting piece of kit! Does it require a flat surface to work on or are the individual halves pretty rigid?

I favor a 40% for travel boards. Splits with exposed wires get very annoying very fast. Put a hinge on one of my builds to make it ergonomic, the Plico; https://imgur.com/a/Un0c9

You might be best to ditch the folding aspect. Folding the keyboard doesn't take up any less volume and adds unnecessary complexity. With a 60-70 switch keyboard, the footprint will be manageably small anyways.

I used MLs on a 55 key keyboard and kept the total height to 5/8" with a footprint smaller than an iPad.
https://geekhack.org/index.php?action=d ... 3475;image

Someone built a Planck that can be folded some other ways:



Hmm... scissor switches... interesting.

FletchINKy wrote: Interesting piece of kit! Does it require a flat surface to work on or are the individual halves pretty rigid?

Structurally, the halves are essentially just PCBs, so they have a bit of flex. It'd be rigid enough to use on your lap, though.

Menuhin wrote: Someone built a Planck that can be folded some other ways:



Hmm... scissor switches... interesting.

Yeah, that's me The Plico! I haven't made any kits for them in a while. Maybe that design needs an update.

lynaghk wrote: This particular specimen is in pieces, so I can't check whether the separate space keys send different keycodes.
That's a great idea, though!
Using one as a modifier to map symbols and backspace to the full-sized keys could work, though it might mess up my muscle memory on other machines =P

I use such a mapping on my laptop using autohotkey. I have mapped left alt to activate a layer that maps ASDF to win, ctrl, shift and alt; IJKL to cursors, etc. It works great. I never look at my keyboard anymore, even for typically hard to reach keys.

lynaghk wrote: Interesting to hear your experience w/ the Iris --- that low profile mechanical switches are still too high.
Looks like the stacked PCB design doesn't help in the vertical dept. either (same issue with the Mitosis keyboard).

I love the Iris. It took me a while to get used to key height though. I did make some small modifications to decrease the overall height of the board. I describe that here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyb ... iris_help/

I know exactly what you mean with mechanical keys being too high. I wish someone would start making column staggered with scissors keys.

lynaghk wrote: I haven't reached out to any manufacturers yet, but I'll put it on my TODO list, since given the lack of activity on this post it seems like there's not a lot of DIY experience in the low-profile niche.

I am hoping you will gain some experience and start building them

I will be following this - with interest!

Hi, I really like the idea (I even created an account just for saying this !)

I'd really pay some money for an ortholinear keyboard with scissor switch.
For me the foldable aspect is not really important, if the keyboard is thin enough to fit inside my laptop jacket (14'' so any 14 columns keyboard should fit).
The split aspect is really nice to have but I could go without if I have a few extra keys around the thumbs (eg by splitting the space bar like in Plank boards)

I wonder how hard would it be to have the keyboard on a small plastic plate that could be adapted to replace the original laptop keyboard. How standard are the keyboard connection for inside the laptops ?

Hey,

Bought the iClever after finding it here. Haven't torn it apart yet - my goal, if I ever get to it, is to split it in two and put some kind of connection so I can split them further apart.

On the online keyboard checkers, both spacebars return "spacebar" so I doubt one could be repurposed. Karabiner will do some of that (I toyed with having spacebar as modifier when co-pressed with another and spacebar when just pressed, but it was a bit laggy and introduced a lot of option modified keypresses when I apparently slopily typed). Properly programming it is also beyond me...

FWIW, I am not super fond of the iClever due to the need to pound it - if I don't it seems to occasionally miss my keystrokes (especially letter "a"). For now I have taken to Karabiner software to enable my use of two keyboards, apple wireless jobs, as one split keyboard. (Apple treats each keyboard as it's own, so a modifier on one won't modify a second without Karabiner).

I have a Unikeyboard diverge 2, but can't take the height on top of my inability to properly program it and then the ortholinear all mucking me up. What I want is a Mistel Barrocco that is as flat or flatter than an apple chicklet keyboard.

Will keep up with your progress. Would love to get some scissor switches for DIY.

I too created this account just to show my support for a low profile, portable, ortholinear keyboard. And also share this option for folks. http://www.typematrix.com/2030/features.php

TypeMatrix, you say? Where else did I hear that today…

review-f45/typematrix-split-ergo-orthol ... 19675.html