I have two of these keyboards in my office and have had them for a few years. Here’s my layout minus all of the fancy keybinds like the #[derive()] key or the if err != nil{\n\t\n} key. Feel free to ask me things!
Here’s what my main keyboard that I write most of my blogposts on looks like: https://imgur.com/5Bk5jYH (Gazzew Boba U4 silent tactile switches, XDA ahegao keycaps)
I type slower on the moonlander, but it’s a lot more comfortable when I do type on it.
If it makes you feel better, consider that every one of my articles on xeiaso.net in the last 1.5 years have been written on that keyboard. The XDA keycaps that are on that keyboard are unironically one of the most comfortable typing experiences I’ve ever had. I keep meaning to get XDA caps for my work keyboard (forgive the shitty pic, still trying to get used to this wide angle lens attachment), but I keep forgetting to.
I have the same keeb, with Glorious Pandas and SA keycaps.
I recently got the tenting kit and I highly recommend it, super well built and feels solid when typing on it. Only downside is that it does affect the sound, it’s less thick
I ordered one a while back, but it wasn’t very comfortable (coming from a Kinesis Advantage) and the thumb cluster gave me thumb pains within days, so I returned it (they were very nice about returns).
I now have a Glove80 and it’s just great (bought another one for the office).
I’m a long time (20+ yrs) Advantage user, and I’m curious about other similar keyboards, but they are a) expensive and b) not immediately a huge improvement over the Advantage, so I’ll probably make it to 30 years on the same keyboard. I was vaguely curious about the Advantage 360, because I like the idea of adjusting the space between the halves, but again, expensive for maybe not any improvement? I wish there were a place I could lease a good keyboard for a month or two to decide if I like it.
The 360 is quite a garbage fire, I had a 360 Pro, but sold it. They replaced the Cherry Brown/Red switches by cheaper Gateron Browns, which have deeper actuation (more towards 3mm than 2mm) and I found it tiring to type on.
The 360 Pro uses ZMK, but has a lot of Bluetooth issues, especially connecting the halves. Someone on Reddit offers a switch replacement service and said that on one halve, the key well ribbon cable runs through the clearance zone of the Bluetooth antenna.
The non-Pro 360 initially had some nasty firmware issues, but I heard they fixed some of them.
It was quite a disappointment, given that it is even 200 Euro more expensive than the Advantage2. I switched back quite quickly to my Advantage2 with KinT, before getting a Glove80 (which I absolutely love, no Bluetooth issues, better keywell, better thumb cluster).
This is disappointing, but useful, information, thank you. I don’t care about Bluetooth, or custom firmware, so if it’s problematic, that’s probably done for the 360 for me.
I replaced my Advantage USB with an 360 Pro earlier this year and it’s such a mixed bag. I wanted the pro because I wanted Bluetooth, but honestly, I hate that you have to load custom firmware to do things that used to be built-in, like change Mac and Linux command keys. The custom firmware process they have tried to streamline as much as possible, but it still amounts to forking their Github repo, activating pipelines, making changes using their online editor, downloading files, and copying those files onto each half. This is a lot of work for something that used to be a hotkey.
The hookup between the two halves is glitchy, and it sometimes forgets how to connect. It needs to be charged every two weeks, which means the mild irritant of running two cables, one to each half, and is kind of an overnight job. And a few of the keys are not as easy to hit as they were on the Advantage. It’s also pretty easy to accidentally hit the “reprogram firmware” keys which puts in a mode where you have to power cycle it to get it to work again.
Work paid for it, or I’d be more irritated. For nearly $500, I think it should be way less annoying. I don’t think Bluetooth should be the discriminator between people who want a keyboard they can just use and people who really want to reprogram the whole thing. This wasn’t clear to me at all when I bought it.
In short, I have thought about returning to the one you have. This product does not have the same quality as their earlier products.
I suppose that you use the thumb cluster on the Glove80 regularly. Are you able to use all of the keys on it?
I use a Moonlander at home and I don’t ever use the red thumb button or the bottom one because of how uncomfortable it is (and having rewritten this now, I’m considering swapping the top right thumb button - return - and the middle left thumb button - backspace - because i use backspace so much more).
This is basically my biggest complaint about the keyboard. I guess I must have small hands?
I can reach all 6 per thumb, but I’d say 4 comfortably. On the Moonlander definitely one, maybe two? The issue of the Moonlander thumb cluster is not only that the keys are far away, but also that they are at a weird angle. They don’t follow the natural thumb arc.
I have fairly long fingers, and I still find it hard to reach the red buttons and also the most inside 3 keys (hovering over the home row)… I feel a layout where the special keys are on the outside, such as on regular QWERTY, is more comfortable to use.
Nope, it uses Choc v1 switches, so is only works with Choc v1 keycaps.
I haven’t felt the need to change the caps. They come with MCC cylindrical profile, which is really nice for column stagger keyboards, since you can easily slide up/down your fingers (I guess the best description is: a half-pipe for your fingers?).
Anyone interested in ergo keyboards should consider the insane variety of DIY options, provided the have the hobbiest perspective necessary to justify a lil’ time investment:
I’ve had one of these for about a year and my experience looks like this:
The ortholinear layout is going to mess up your typing if you’re not used to it.
You’re going to endlessly tweak the layout/functions for a few months after you get it.
While you’re tweaking you’ll forget where a particular key is. It’s going to happen. Just hope it’s not during an interview and you have to explain “one sec, I need to figure out where my forward slash key is”.
You’ll use your pinky finger significantly less.
All in all I’m still typing slower and with more errors than on a traditional keyboard, but it’s significantly more comfortable (for me) and I can prioritize keys for the kind of work that I do (e.g. with Rust the & key is very accessible).
I tried one of these for almost a year. It was comfy, but I didn’t really enjoy customizing it. And even after that year I still type faster on a regular keyboard by about 10 WPM, so I switched to a low profile keyboard w/ minimal key travel, which was just as comfortable for me to use.
I have an Ergodox EZ from the same brand, but customization was never the selling point for me. Ever since I got it set up in Dec 2021, I’ve only made some small incremental changes to my layout.
What I really like about these keyboards is not needing to hunch over them to type. I can keep both halves apart, and so I can keep my hands and shoulders in a more natural position.
I’ve been using a Moonlander for a few years now and absolutely love it! I’m using Kailh Pro Purple switches (started out with Cherry MX Browns but later switched) with blank XDA caps, although the blanks are color coded to character keys, meta keys, etc. (I find the blanks actually help my brain because of how the layout layers work).
I suffer from severe arthritis in my finger joints and moving to an ortholinear keyboard has made a world of difference. I went from severe pain after an extended typing session to basically no pain even after a day of programming. I also have slightly wider shoulders, and being able to use a split keyboard noticeably improves my shoulder and upper back tension.
I suffer from severe arthritis in my finger joints and moving to an ortholinear keyboard has made a world of difference. I went from severe pain after an extended typing session to basically no pain even after a day of programming. I also have slightly wider shoulders, and being able to use a split keyboard noticeably improves my shoulder and upper back tension.
Sorry to hear about the arthritis. Are you sure though it’s the layout that improved things for you though? I had joint pain when I was typing on a MacBook keyboard but it went away immediately after I switched to almost any mechanical switches. My point is, it might have been the switches.
It’s entirely possible it’s a combination of things. Before using an ortholinear I was using a Vortex Rac3r 3 with Cherry Browns and a Vortex Cypher with Cherry Reds. Both of which definitely improved the pain, but it wasn’t virtually pain free as it is with the Moonlander. My guess is the switches, ortholinear, split, and layout all play a role. Changing the layout on the Vortex boards is much more difficult so I rarely did much beyond just some basic remaps, but ZSA boards it’s pretty effortless to have some more complex setups that keep me from having to do awkward chording movements. Here’s my current layout: https://configure.zsa.io/moonlander/layouts/B9rm0/WLY0y/0 probably the biggest help is being able to use the opposing hand’s index finger to shift down a layer for numberpads and symbols rather than reaching for the top row + shift. e.g. my left index finger holds down g and my right hand is now a number pad on the home row. Likewise, my right index finger holds down h and my left hand is now a symbol map on the home row.
I just bought a Moonlander and a Kinesis Advantage2 right after. If you’re going for ease of typing, anything RSI, I would really recommend Kinesis or a bowl shape. The customizability of the Moonlander is great but I’m going to be sticking with the Advantage2 for now and considering buying Advantage360 or a Glove80.
It’s a replacement of the standard Advantage2 controller board that provides QMK and thus all of the same software customizability of the Moonlander. I have some KinT variant in all of my Advantage2s (one of them uses a fork with the Black Pill controller, which is cheaper and provide USB-C).
I have one of these. I like it, but I will say it’s use is not like, transformative for me. It’s moderately improved my typing speed (after quite a bit of practice relearning how to type on it), not done much to relieve RSI (after quite a bit of tweaking, and more to come); but the customization is great, and I like the extra space it gives me in the middle of my desk and flexibility on arm position. Honestly that’s probably the best feature for me, the extra space.
I have a harebrained scheme to attach it to a chair, I suspect if I spent more time customizing, I might get more out of it, but wasn’t the transformative jump like going from chiclet/laptop keyboard -> mechanical was.
I got one of these to prevent RSI. I haven’t experienced any, but wanted to do preventative measures after I got a light case of emacs pinky (resolved by remapping Caps Lock to Ctrl).
The Oryx tooling was horrible at that time for Scandinavian keycodes, at least Norwegian ones. I could add æøå, but since our symbol pairings are completely different, delimiters wouldn’t work, & turned into / etc… Which I kinda get: We use AltGr quite extensively, and that’s absent from US keyboard layouts AFAIK.
I didn’t bother to manually try and resolve this, so I instead learnt the US layout. I guess that’s a blessing in disguise, because I felt a lot of the symbol locations didn’t make sense to me. So I tweaked and adjusted them quite liberally in the beginning, leading to something that now works well for me. That also caused me to end up with home row mods and frankly made my setup unusable for keyboard gaming… I mean, I guess that also prevents RSI, right?
I got a Keyboardio Model 100 also, which I prefer because of the palm key and because it’s slightly easier to reach the top keys for me. And because the keys are curved it’s slightly easier to automatically align your hands, but that’s not that big of a deal.
One day I hope they’ll open up to electrostatic capacitive rubber domes as an alternative to mechanical keyswitches. I’d pay premium for an ergonomic option that actually thocks.
It seems that only a very small number of people have made custom electrocapacitive keyboards, at least as far as I could find. There are a lot of things that make it finicky:
The circuitry is analogue, rather than digital, and keypress detection measures changes of a few picofarads, so the PCB design needs more expertise than usual. On the up side, like hall effect switches, you can adjust the activation point in software or use them as analogue inputs for things like mouse keys.
The rubber domes and conical springs are sandwiched between the PCB and switch housings, and loose when the keyboard is disassembled. It is tricky to get them aligned when reassembling. It is easier if the domes are on a sheet matching the size and layout of the PCB, which they won’t be in a custom layout.
After reassembly the firmware needs to be recalibrated to accommodate any changes in alignment of the domes and springs.
The plate and PCB must be firmly fixed to each other, since there is no lower switch housing to take the bottom-out force: it hits the PCB through the dome and spring, and none of it is taken directly by the upper housing or plate.
There are not many sources of switch parts. I get the impression Topre parts are only available through unofficial channels. Niz will sell switch parts to hobbyists in keyboard-sized quantities.
Yup. Which is why I want to buy one—not build one. I built a ErgoDox way back, & I’d rather have a manufacturer do the hard work. Of course back then even Cherry switches weren’t the easiest thing to come by. But the folks that have tried Topre or NiZ’s switches broadly seem to pine for the feeling of these switches despite the limited supply. With the right nudges maybe the same thing that happened for mechanical switches could happen.
NiZ is cheap & still feels great, but the firmware releases as Windows executables in a Google Drive doesn’t inspire confidence. I’ve emailed them and they don’t seem to interested in the ergo and/or split keyboard crowd.
Looks cool. Unfortunately I can’t reach the thumb keys on such layouts. I wonder why keyboardio-style layout isn’t more common. Not enough smallhanders to make a difference for their sales maybe.
I’ve gone off fancy keyboards with microcontrollers I think. I got the Planck EZ (now discontinued) from them, and while it does what it says in the box, the board gets warm, and very warm if you turn on the lighting (which is heavily advertised).
Life’s complicated enough without thinking of cooling solutions for my peripherals.
I have two of these keyboards in my office and have had them for a few years. Here’s my layout minus all of the fancy keybinds like the
#[derive()]key or theif err != nil{\n\t\n}key. Feel free to ask me things!Here’s what my main keyboard that I write most of my blogposts on looks like: https://imgur.com/5Bk5jYH (Gazzew Boba U4 silent tactile switches, XDA ahegao keycaps)
I type slower on the moonlander, but it’s a lot more comfortable when I do type on it.
I wish I had never pressed that 2nd link.
If it makes you feel better, consider that every one of my articles on xeiaso.net in the last 1.5 years have been written on that keyboard. The XDA keycaps that are on that keyboard are unironically one of the most comfortable typing experiences I’ve ever had. I keep meaning to get XDA caps for my work keyboard (forgive the shitty pic, still trying to get used to this wide angle lens attachment), but I keep forgetting to.
Does you keeb make an appropriate sound for those caps when you type?
I don’t have enough firmware space for that, or I would as a bit when I stream.
FYI, this is built into rust-analyzer:
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1711539/262337528-2422caa2-a072-418c-b0db-faa0d644b788.webm
Things burned into my keyboard firmware can’t be forgotten to be enabled in my editor.
Sick setup Cadey!
I have the same keeb, with Glorious Pandas and SA keycaps.
I recently got the tenting kit and I highly recommend it, super well built and feels solid when typing on it. Only downside is that it does affect the sound, it’s less thick
I ordered one a while back, but it wasn’t very comfortable (coming from a Kinesis Advantage) and the thumb cluster gave me thumb pains within days, so I returned it (they were very nice about returns).
I now have a Glove80 and it’s just great (bought another one for the office).
I’m a long time (20+ yrs) Advantage user, and I’m curious about other similar keyboards, but they are a) expensive and b) not immediately a huge improvement over the Advantage, so I’ll probably make it to 30 years on the same keyboard. I was vaguely curious about the Advantage 360, because I like the idea of adjusting the space between the halves, but again, expensive for maybe not any improvement? I wish there were a place I could lease a good keyboard for a month or two to decide if I like it.
The 360 is quite a garbage fire, I had a 360 Pro, but sold it. They replaced the Cherry Brown/Red switches by cheaper Gateron Browns, which have deeper actuation (more towards 3mm than 2mm) and I found it tiring to type on.
The 360 Pro uses ZMK, but has a lot of Bluetooth issues, especially connecting the halves. Someone on Reddit offers a switch replacement service and said that on one halve, the key well ribbon cable runs through the clearance zone of the Bluetooth antenna.
The non-Pro 360 initially had some nasty firmware issues, but I heard they fixed some of them.
It was quite a disappointment, given that it is even 200 Euro more expensive than the Advantage2. I switched back quite quickly to my Advantage2 with KinT, before getting a Glove80 (which I absolutely love, no Bluetooth issues, better keywell, better thumb cluster).
I have both the regular and pro models of the advantage 360, and they both work quite well for me.
Definitely the firmware programming aspect with ZMK was a a hassle with the 360 pro.
I still prefer my advantage 2, but I’m mostly typing on my advantage 360 these days because the split keypads is really nice.
The build quality is excellent compared to for instance the Ergodox that I own, it’s up to part with my Advantage 2.
Just offering another anecdotal experience into the mix here.
This is disappointing, but useful, information, thank you. I don’t care about Bluetooth, or custom firmware, so if it’s problematic, that’s probably done for the 360 for me.
I replaced my Advantage USB with an 360 Pro earlier this year and it’s such a mixed bag. I wanted the pro because I wanted Bluetooth, but honestly, I hate that you have to load custom firmware to do things that used to be built-in, like change Mac and Linux command keys. The custom firmware process they have tried to streamline as much as possible, but it still amounts to forking their Github repo, activating pipelines, making changes using their online editor, downloading files, and copying those files onto each half. This is a lot of work for something that used to be a hotkey.
The hookup between the two halves is glitchy, and it sometimes forgets how to connect. It needs to be charged every two weeks, which means the mild irritant of running two cables, one to each half, and is kind of an overnight job. And a few of the keys are not as easy to hit as they were on the Advantage. It’s also pretty easy to accidentally hit the “reprogram firmware” keys which puts in a mode where you have to power cycle it to get it to work again.
Work paid for it, or I’d be more irritated. For nearly $500, I think it should be way less annoying. I don’t think Bluetooth should be the discriminator between people who want a keyboard they can just use and people who really want to reprogram the whole thing. This wasn’t clear to me at all when I bought it.
In short, I have thought about returning to the one you have. This product does not have the same quality as their earlier products.
This is a big bummer. Oh well.
I suppose that you use the thumb cluster on the Glove80 regularly. Are you able to use all of the keys on it?
I use a Moonlander at home and I don’t ever use the red thumb button or the bottom one because of how uncomfortable it is (and having rewritten this now, I’m considering swapping the top right thumb button - return - and the middle left thumb button - backspace - because i use backspace so much more).
This is basically my biggest complaint about the keyboard. I guess I must have small hands?
I can reach all 6 per thumb, but I’d say 4 comfortably. On the Moonlander definitely one, maybe two? The issue of the Moonlander thumb cluster is not only that the keys are far away, but also that they are at a weird angle. They don’t follow the natural thumb arc.
I have fairly long fingers, and I still find it hard to reach the red buttons and also the most inside 3 keys (hovering over the home row)… I feel a layout where the special keys are on the outside, such as on regular QWERTY, is more comfortable to use.
Does Glove80 work with high profile caps like SA? Is it even compatible with cherry stem caps? It looks like it might be slim chocks.
Nope, it uses Choc v1 switches, so is only works with Choc v1 keycaps.
I haven’t felt the need to change the caps. They come with MCC cylindrical profile, which is really nice for column stagger keyboards, since you can easily slide up/down your fingers (I guess the best description is: a half-pipe for your fingers?).
Should work fine with SA keycaps: the switches are regular MX stylehttps://www.zsa.io/moonlander/keyswitchesEr wups, the question was about the Glove80 not the Moonlander
That keyboard looks really interesting! Can you customize the keys of it like the Moonlander?
Yeah, you can try their layout editor here:
https://my.glove80.com/
They use the open source ZMK firmware.
Anyone interested in ergo keyboards should consider the insane variety of DIY options, provided the have the hobbiest perspective necessary to justify a lil’ time investment:
https://ianthehenry.com/posts/kyria-build/a-wireless-ergonomic-keyboard/
https://aposymbiont.github.io/split-keyboards/
thanks for the links, the first one is a really nice guide of what to expect when assembling these yourself
I’ve had one of these for about a year and my experience looks like this:
All in all I’m still typing slower and with more errors than on a traditional keyboard, but it’s significantly more comfortable (for me) and I can prioritize keys for the kind of work that I do (e.g. with Rust the & key is very accessible).
I tried one of these for almost a year. It was comfy, but I didn’t really enjoy customizing it. And even after that year I still type faster on a regular keyboard by about 10 WPM, so I switched to a low profile keyboard w/ minimal key travel, which was just as comfortable for me to use.
I have an Ergodox EZ from the same brand, but customization was never the selling point for me. Ever since I got it set up in Dec 2021, I’ve only made some small incremental changes to my layout.
What I really like about these keyboards is not needing to hunch over them to type. I can keep both halves apart, and so I can keep my hands and shoulders in a more natural position.
I’ve been using a Moonlander for a few years now and absolutely love it! I’m using Kailh Pro Purple switches (started out with Cherry MX Browns but later switched) with blank XDA caps, although the blanks are color coded to character keys, meta keys, etc. (I find the blanks actually help my brain because of how the layout layers work).
I suffer from severe arthritis in my finger joints and moving to an ortholinear keyboard has made a world of difference. I went from severe pain after an extended typing session to basically no pain even after a day of programming. I also have slightly wider shoulders, and being able to use a split keyboard noticeably improves my shoulder and upper back tension.
Sorry to hear about the arthritis. Are you sure though it’s the layout that improved things for you though? I had joint pain when I was typing on a MacBook keyboard but it went away immediately after I switched to almost any mechanical switches. My point is, it might have been the switches.
It’s entirely possible it’s a combination of things. Before using an ortholinear I was using a Vortex Rac3r 3 with Cherry Browns and a Vortex Cypher with Cherry Reds. Both of which definitely improved the pain, but it wasn’t virtually pain free as it is with the Moonlander. My guess is the switches, ortholinear, split, and layout all play a role. Changing the layout on the Vortex boards is much more difficult so I rarely did much beyond just some basic remaps, but ZSA boards it’s pretty effortless to have some more complex setups that keep me from having to do awkward chording movements. Here’s my current layout: https://configure.zsa.io/moonlander/layouts/B9rm0/WLY0y/0 probably the biggest help is being able to use the opposing hand’s index finger to shift down a layer for numberpads and symbols rather than reaching for the top row + shift. e.g. my left index finger holds down
gand my right hand is now a number pad on the home row. Likewise, my right index finger holds downhand my left hand is now a symbol map on the home row.I just bought a Moonlander and a Kinesis Advantage2 right after. If you’re going for ease of typing, anything RSI, I would really recommend Kinesis or a bowl shape. The customizability of the Moonlander is great but I’m going to be sticking with the Advantage2 for now and considering buying Advantage360 or a Glove80.
Just wanted to mention @stapelberg ’s KinT project:
https://github.com/kinx-project/kint
It’s a replacement of the standard Advantage2 controller board that provides QMK and thus all of the same software customizability of the Moonlander. I have some KinT variant in all of my Advantage2s (one of them uses a fork with the Black Pill controller, which is cheaper and provide USB-C).
I have one of these. I like it, but I will say it’s use is not like, transformative for me. It’s moderately improved my typing speed (after quite a bit of practice relearning how to type on it), not done much to relieve RSI (after quite a bit of tweaking, and more to come); but the customization is great, and I like the extra space it gives me in the middle of my desk and flexibility on arm position. Honestly that’s probably the best feature for me, the extra space.
I have a harebrained scheme to attach it to a chair, I suspect if I spent more time customizing, I might get more out of it, but wasn’t the transformative jump like going from chiclet/laptop keyboard -> mechanical was.
love my moonlander, but had to moleskin the wrist wrests
I got one of these to prevent RSI. I haven’t experienced any, but wanted to do preventative measures after I got a light case of emacs pinky (resolved by remapping Caps Lock to Ctrl).
The Oryx tooling was horrible at that time for Scandinavian keycodes, at least Norwegian ones. I could add æøå, but since our symbol pairings are completely different, delimiters wouldn’t work,
&turned into/etc… Which I kinda get: We use AltGr quite extensively, and that’s absent from US keyboard layouts AFAIK.I didn’t bother to manually try and resolve this, so I instead learnt the US layout. I guess that’s a blessing in disguise, because I felt a lot of the symbol locations didn’t make sense to me. So I tweaked and adjusted them quite liberally in the beginning, leading to something that now works well for me. That also caused me to end up with home row mods and frankly made my setup unusable for keyboard gaming… I mean, I guess that also prevents RSI, right?
I got a Keyboardio Model 100 also, which I prefer because of the palm key and because it’s slightly easier to reach the top keys for me. And because the keys are curved it’s slightly easier to automatically align your hands, but that’s not that big of a deal.
One day I hope they’ll open up to electrostatic capacitive rubber domes as an alternative to mechanical keyswitches. I’d pay premium for an ergonomic option that actually thocks.
It seems that only a very small number of people have made custom electrocapacitive keyboards, at least as far as I could find. There are a lot of things that make it finicky:
The circuitry is analogue, rather than digital, and keypress detection measures changes of a few picofarads, so the PCB design needs more expertise than usual. On the up side, like hall effect switches, you can adjust the activation point in software or use them as analogue inputs for things like mouse keys.
The rubber domes and conical springs are sandwiched between the PCB and switch housings, and loose when the keyboard is disassembled. It is tricky to get them aligned when reassembling. It is easier if the domes are on a sheet matching the size and layout of the PCB, which they won’t be in a custom layout.
After reassembly the firmware needs to be recalibrated to accommodate any changes in alignment of the domes and springs.
The plate and PCB must be firmly fixed to each other, since there is no lower switch housing to take the bottom-out force: it hits the PCB through the dome and spring, and none of it is taken directly by the upper housing or plate.
There are not many sources of switch parts. I get the impression Topre parts are only available through unofficial channels. Niz will sell switch parts to hobbyists in keyboard-sized quantities.
Some links:
https://github.com/tmk/tmk_keyboard/wiki/Capacitive-Sense
https://github.com/tomsmalley/custom-topre-guide
https://www.nizkeyboard.com/products/2019-new-niz-ec-switch
https://hhkb.io/modding/Rubber_Domes/
https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/wiki/modifications_topre/
The tako is a recent one to take a look at https://github.com/ssbb/tako.
Yup. Which is why I want to buy one—not build one. I built a ErgoDox way back, & I’d rather have a manufacturer do the hard work. Of course back then even Cherry switches weren’t the easiest thing to come by. But the folks that have tried Topre or NiZ’s switches broadly seem to pine for the feeling of these switches despite the limited supply. With the right nudges maybe the same thing that happened for mechanical switches could happen.
NiZ is cheap & still feels great, but the firmware releases as Windows executables in a Google Drive doesn’t inspire confidence. I’ve emailed them and they don’t seem to interested in the ergo and/or split keyboard crowd.
Looks cool. Unfortunately I can’t reach the thumb keys on such layouts. I wonder why keyboardio-style layout isn’t more common. Not enough smallhanders to make a difference for their sales maybe.
Is there a new one out or something?
No, this is just a product page link.
Hilarious.
I thought I’d repost since the Moonlander’s popularity has increased a ton since the last post and the last post didn’t get much traction.
I’ve gone off fancy keyboards with microcontrollers I think. I got the Planck EZ (now discontinued) from them, and while it does what it says in the box, the board gets warm, and very warm if you turn on the lighting (which is heavily advertised).
Life’s complicated enough without thinking of cooling solutions for my peripherals.