deskthority

Hi all! I have a project I have been working on over the last few months. The PCB has been done for a while and I have a few at hand to mess around and weed out bugs before I make the final perfection, and just yesterday I got the frame from a fabricator friend; currently in the middle of confirming fit and finish and pondering whether to powder coat, pickle, or keep the alu naked.

I'd appreciate thoughts from the Hive Mind.

Some highlight pics below in reverse order, there's much more on the imgur here: https://imgur.com/a/z5OAy

What a piece of keyboard! Enjoy it.

Daring layout design... I like it!

Wow, that's a unique design. I've been interested in the idea of a left numpad recently, due to ergonomics, but had never thought about a left nav cluster.

I will when it's finished! The interim naked PCB sandwich has been my daily driver for almost a month now, it works really well, the next step is getting the final casing and aesthetics done, proving to be trickier than expected.

If you use right-hand mouse I can't recommend both nav and numbers on the left enough, much more comfortable for your mouse hand.

I looked at a bunch of TKLs to bring the mouse closer in to the centre but couldn't find one that convinced me as doing lots of CAD/FEA/Excel work I got tired of taking my hand off the mouse. I found a decent left-hand keyboard which worked nicely - left hand keyboard, right hand mouse - but I kept having to edit registry to get the PgUp/PgDn cluster and media buttons how I liked it. The left hand keyboard market's pretty limited so why not design my own and program it how I wanted? And while I'm at it why not go ortho and split the space and play around with the design? And so EVE_Project was born.

I'm about to give the second naked PCB sandwich prototype to my brother for an opinion outside my own head. He's more a man of taste than utility so we'll see how that goes.

Wow - What a unique and good looking design!
BTW, could you check the link https://imgur.com/a/z5OAy . I got an error.

What caps did you use? Like them very much!

I missed this one when first posted. I personally tend to prefer old style keyboards, but had to comment because your board is seriously awesome looking! Wow.