deskthority

Hi all. Long time lurker very infrequent poster here.
I've been keeping my eye on these forums for a while now on the lookout for a keyboard that meets my requirements......after a while I decided that there was no point waiting any more and I should design and build my own keyboard.
At least this way I can add features that keyboard manufacturers would normally never consider.

So my requirements:
Basically I want a keyboard for all my coding and sys admin needs. So it needs to be good for long periods of typing, portable (in case I need to carry the keyboard down to a server room or what not). Oh sure an HHKB or a Poker they would be great no? Well no I'm an ISO kiddy, I like my massive Enter and I'm not willing to compromise on that! Other things I wanted, NO CAPS LOCK! Seriously what is the point? The Windows key! Just go away, silly useless key. I wanted to retain the arrow keys but not have to press a modifier to enable them. It will fit in a regular poker case so I can make good use of all they existing sexy poker cases.

So a little bit of rearranging later and some very crude LODraw pictures later I came up with this magnificent beauty!: The colour of the keys represents the Cherry MX keys under them. So a lovely mix of Blue (for normal typing keys), Green (for those often used typing keys that tend to get a little more abuse), Brown (for keys that get a fair bit of pressing love but arent typing keys), Reds (for keys that are often needed to be held) and one White on the delete key because I wanted it to be a brown/blue but heavier to prevent accidental keypresses.

So what do you guys think? Its taken a while to reach this point. Now its time to get designing my PCB layout!

Very nice!

What's that big white key on the bottom right corner?

You might want to create an ANSI version as well, since I know many would be interested in rolling their own ( Including me )

Furthermore : I am willing to co-operate on designing the PCB, firmware and case. ( First time for me as well ) I have access to cheap PCB vendors, a 3D printer to print the case and cheap DS keycaps.

Sounds nice, just wondering how you'll find the keycaps for this, specially the spacebars !

Mrinterface: Thats dead space where I was thinking of putting some LEDs to indicate power, Shift Lock and Sym Lock. Ill have a look at doing an ANSI enter version too but it wont be true ANSI just like this is not true ISO, infact its sort of more JIS than anything else.

isman: Hopefully (with the exception of the spacebars) all the keycaps are of regularly used size and position so it will only be a case of buying a regular set with maybe a couple of custom prints. Re the spacebars I read here recently about someone using 3x1 Cherry spacebars and finding them somewhere.

Updated with an ANSI layout. Will do two PCBs one for each.

This is a very odd keyboard layout, mainly due to the swapped widths of the Shift keys.

I like the look of it though and I would love to modify my Poker into something like this. Please do share if you design a PCB for it.

BTW: are you going to design the PCB for a blank Atmel microcontroller or will you use a pre-assembled one like the Teensy?

I swapped them because I wanted the \| key in a more friendly place and incorporating the arrow keys.

I am not sure yet. What do people think? Teensy would be easier but seeing as how I want to be able to add 4 different USB ports on the back, and to save space, it would be better just to allow the microcontroller to be placed directly onto the board, the trouble with that is the ATMega 32U4 only comes in QFP which would mean lots of lovely SMD soldering for everybody. YAY.

Does anyone know someplace I can find out where under a keycap the switch should be? I mean I am guessing that the 1x1, 2x1 and 3x1 switches go under the middle of the cap but what about a 2.25x1 or a 1.75x1 etc etc?

Well had to do a little rearrange and switch out the 3x1 spacebars (impossible to find it seems) with a more standard 6.25x1 spacebar. Also seems to have given me a little more space on the PCB for putting all the gubbins. Also switching the Alt and Del keys makes the layout more standard. Trying to keep switching as simple as possible. Having to learn a new layout is no fun.

gropingmantis wrote:... 3x1 spacebars (impossible to find it seems) ...

This seller has some Access POS 'boards that have them, just search for 'access'. OK, not cheap for a spacebar, but 'possible'

Or you could buy a huge batch of them from SP and sell them to others needing them, they're kinda sought after, not really but kinda.

Soarer wrote:

gropingmantis wrote:... 3x1 spacebars (impossible to find it seems) ...

This seller has some Access POS 'boards that have them, just search for 'access'. OK, not cheap for a spacebar, but 'possible'

£25 posted for 1 key of which I would need two is kind of a sting. also the extra space that the 6.25 gives me is really useful. I mean it was almost tempting to just use one long shift key on the right hand side for space as i only ever use the right half of my space bar. Then there would be loads of space for a teensy.

Would be cool if SP can make us some! I'm sure I asked 7bit if they could before, and got a 'no', but where did Access get them from?!

Yeah, a Teensy can just about fit under a spacebar that's 6x1 or more. Dunno if you've seen my mini, but hanging the Teensy underneath at the back is also possible (depends on your case plans really).

Yeah I want to avoid using the teensy where possible as I wanted to have many different ports on the back. As far as the case is concerned I kind of want it to be able to fit inside the poker case. Not only so its eaasier to source a case but so if people with them want to use this layout it requires as little expenditure as possible.

Does anyone know if its possible to put diodes in non diode MX switches? I mean is the cut out and holes still there? Getting hold of switches with diodes seems a little diffcult too.

Sure, just open the switches up and fit the diodes. Tedious, but wouldnt take long once you got a rhythm goin!