Where should I start?
Where should I start?
Hey! I saw posts from here on my feed, and have been sucked in. Beautiful keyboards!
But, I'm a bit overwhelmed with options. If I want to get started with an EMK, what would you suggest?
I am comfortable with general soldering (though haven't done surface-mount), so putting a kit together should be doable. I use a Dvorak keyboard layout, so would prefer a way to customize keycaps. But ... I would prefer a kit that comes with everything (or at least a checklist), and doesn't require me to figure out what components to order, to help ensure I have compatible parts.
Thanks for your suggestions!
A good place to start is our wiki, you'll find there a small list of some popular keyboards as well as links to other databases of keyboards what hopefully will help you. some obvious ones: Corne (crkbd), Kyria, Iris, Lily58, Sofle, Sweep.
If you search, the open-source ones linked generally are being sold as kits in a few places, so have a look around. you can see a list of vendors in our wiki too, it may not be exhaustive but it's pretty comprehensive.
I'd like to give a +1 for Beekeeb as a vendor. Leo there is a rockstar with incredible support. They provide kits with everything in them so you can assemble them like Legos, or presoldered and assembled boards too. Beyond that, Beekeeb invests in open source, often releasing new designs but also publishing variations of boards and cases and firmware for all of us to use.
First, I'd check out the wiki https://gitlab.com/ergomechkeyboards/wiki/-/wikis/useful-resources For a DIY kit, I would check to see what kits the vendors in your part of the world have available. You'll usually need to buy switches and keycaps separately.
You'll want to figure out how many keys you want. For this, I'd recommend reading about how people achieve a 36 key layout (3 keys for each finger, including 3 for each thumb, and an extra column for your index fingers) with techniques like home row mods and decide if going that small is right for you. This https://github.com/manna-harbour/miryoku/tree/master/docs/reference is one of the most popular 36 key layout. 36 is about the smallest you'll get from a kit, though some brave souls go smaller or even much smaller. Here is a more extreme example of someone using a 16 key layout, though you'll likely not find kits that small: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RN_4PQ0j1A
You'll also want to decide wireless (comes with battery and harder to configure ZMK firmware) or wired (usually you'd use QMK firmware, which has some more user friendly ways to configure it and is a bit more mature). And whether you'll go with MX switches and keycaps (more travel distance) or Choc switches and keycaps (less travel distance)... most boards will only support one or the other of these.
Thanks! I'll also want to use this with both my home and work computers (Linux and Mac), but I imagine info on setting things up should be easy enough to find.
That shouldn't be an issue. All the configuration lives on the keyboard itself (except for some specific not too common tools some people use that live on the OS and do some keystroke processing there which you can easily avoid). And you shouldn't really need to do anything that is only Linux or only Mac compatible any more than any other keyboard.
Because you plan to travel with it, if you go wireless, you may want figure out how to add a power switch which is an uncommon feature for kits to offer. Its really only needed for wireless that also get thrown into bag because if buttons get hit in your bag it'll keep it awake draining your battery and also potentially sending random keystrokes to the computer in is connected to.
Some questions that you will have to ask yourself is what keys you're interested in losing. Do you need a number row? Function key row? Expectations for how much you use layers and thumbs can help to decide.
I've always liked a number pad better than the row, so I figure getting used to layers will be the way to go. Function keys would be the same. I'm looking at beekeeb's piantor kit with 42 keys, which seems like a decent starter. Rotary encoders are attractive, but I'll probably save them for the future, especially as the kits he has with optional encoders have either too many keys, or fewer than I want to start with.
What are some of your recommendations for an ergo keyboard with f row and minimal layers.
All of the ergo keyboards I see out there never have the F row and have so many layers.
You can customize a Dactyl to have them. But here are some that have function keys that are a bit more pre-designed:
I'm sure there are more out there, but they're not popular so you have to customize or dig.
Depending on what region you're in, there's probably gonna be some folks selling cool ergomech kits. I'm personally in the EU, can recommend keeb.supply, Keycapsss, 42keebs, splitkb.com, Keygem.
I'm probably forgetting some, and these are only the EU-based ones. Maybe someone else could recommend vendors in other regions :)
Whew boy, what a rabbit hole chancing into this thread was for me.
Went to keeb.supply and then that fantastic word document on keyboard layouts and now I want to buy a soldering iron, hundreds of pounds of keyboard parts, and learn an entirely new layout.
Aay very happy that linking that document in the intro to small keyboards helped someone :)
You can also easily try alternative layouts on your current keyboard via tools such as kmonad.
I recommend you watch this stream of nicel (nice nano creator) assembling a keyboard:
He also has a keyboard store that sells keyboards that are optimized for wireless and have many components pre-soldered.
You will need to make a lot of decisions:
- Do you want a number row or do you want to use layers for numbers so that you don’t have to stretch?
- Do you want a second pinky column (esc, shift, …) or use homerow mods or thumb keys for those.
- How many thumb keys do you want? (Only three are realistically usable unless you have huge hands)
- Do you want regular MX switches or low profile Choc switches?
- How much row stagger do you want?
It can be overwhelming and unfortunately the Reddit community is blacked out. That’s where all the answers lie until we can get a searchable archive.
Some keyboard designs you would want to look into are:
- corne
- lily58
- Sofle
- Chocofi
And of course, if you get stuck, make sure to ask here. Other people will have the same questions and we need to build up the knowledge base on this platform.
In my opinion, https://typeractive.xyz/pages/build offers a very compelling way to customize a build. They'll let you pick whatever features you want and send a partially completed kit (limited soldering needed). The only limitation is that they do currently only the Corne in either 42 or 36 keys, but will do either of those in either MX switches (taller, but a lot more options for switches and keycaps) or choc switches (low profile, but limited options for switches and keycaps).
One thing you have not mentioned is that you probably want to get everything with hot-swap sockets so that you can swap out switches, microcontrollers etc. I'm still in the beginning myself with my first board and I've swapped switches, taken them out, modded them, etc. There is a lot to learn, and you will not get your perfect board the first time. Socketing both means that you can try out tons of more options now for the switches, and that if you decide your first board is not to your liking at all, you can then move the switches and microcontrollers over to another board of a completely design, say going from a Corne to a Soffle, without needing to repurchase everything. The switches, keycaps, and microcontrollers are the majority of the cost in many boards.
Update: I'll be visiting family overseas for a few weeks so need to wait on my order. :( But, I'm seriously considering the Hillside 46 (though may go down to 38 keys plus 2 Rotary encoders). I'm wanting the splay, and this keyboard has miryoku support, which looks like a good place for me to start. I'm currently working on ideal keymaps for my layers (with a symbol layer customized for my math-teaching needs), and trying to figure out encoders...without having the hardware in front of me.
For keycaps you have a few options. DSA and XDA are uniform profiles so you can arrange them however you want - you’ll just have the homing bumps in the wrong place unless you find a set with extra homing keys or non homing F and J. Some SA and MT3 sets have an add-on “Colevrak” or “typist” kit to support the most common alternative layouts. Or you can just use blanks.
I'm an absolute beginner, and I went with Beekeeb's Piantor keyboard. I couldn't be happier.
The MBK Legend keycaps have homing versions for Colemak and Dvorak in standard kit if you go that route. They're great keycaps