Day1 is sunny

Back

Getting older

Everything started this summer with some annoying and persistent tingling in one of my hand and arm. That was the initial motivation to get more interested in ergonomic work gadgets, and from that to split keyboards.

What I want from my ideal keyboard:

• Ergonomic work position, someone states split keyboard can result in more natural body position.
• Good type feeling, I like feeling when key is pressed, I like tactile feedback.
• Not interested in wireless, knobs, leds … but maybe a small LDC?
• I like this idea to try different key arrangement (vertical vs horizontal staggering). I suppose my keyboard does not need matching typewriter mechanical constraint, let’s focus on my body mechanical constrains more.

Measure myself in design

First step is get some measurements of my hands: it is like stick some paper on the floor and have fun with some felt-tips.

After that I moved the image in Inkscape mostly to be able to measure distances and angles

And now what?

There are various approaches you can take at this point:

• hand wire your board: so create a mechanical support for your switches. It could be a 3D printed plastic plate, a hand or laser cut wood panel, a PCB with mechanical only functionality. Whatever you do has to be a “panel with some rectangular holes” where to fit your switches.

• design a PCB from scratch in some CAD tools. Starting from a schematic, down to footprint and trace routing, to end with a bunch of gerber files.

• everything has to be code!!!

Done

• Get the existing Ergogen project working on my TW machine
• Get Kicad as flatpack
• Go back to the flatfootfox ergogen-part3-pcbs
• Join the #ergogen Discord channel and ask for help about the nets