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This has been a long time in the making.
Hand Pain
Around four years ago the symptoms of arthritis and carpal tunnel finally started picking up. I even had a period where my entire left arm from elbow down was numb for a week straight. I've been putting in 8+ hours a day on a computer and since graduating high school more like 15+ hours. This has been going on since I was 9 or 10 back in the Windows 3.1 days. I'm now well into my 30's.
I had enough sense to get an ergonomic chair and hit the gym constantly. But when it came to typing I'd let my wrists sag and I'd pound the keys like a madman. It caught up with me and I slowly enacted the change that leads me to this post.
I started learning about mechanical keyboards and remembered how that was basically the default option when I was taking a keyboarding class in middle school. These new chicklet keys with rubber scissors and dome switches were destroying my hands. Yeah they look cool and sleek but are horrible for health. So I was determined to buy a mech and did, but I'll leave that chapter out because it gets better...
The first real thing I did was start learning the Dvorak layout, the first one designed for efficiency instead of Qwerty, which was designed to demo typewriters and keep those key arms from binding up. There are more layouts now like Colemak but Dvorak has wide adoption.
I've been at 100 words per minute on Qwerty for decades, so there was a lot of resistance to changing. I slowly practiced over the course of a year on and off. I'd skip a few weeks and it'd all come right back, so eventually I was at functional levels of maybe 30-40 WPM. I couldn't get myself to make the full jump though.
Mechanical Keyboard
After learning about the switches and whether I wanted a click, bump, and how much pressure and distance I wanted for each keypress, I finally ordered a Poker 2 keyboard. They're on #3 now. I used it till I destroyed the switches and had to decide if I wanted to fix it or build an...
Ergodox
I enjoyed Cherry MX Brown switches. They required more effort to push than chicklets but with a long enough travel distance to be able to train my hands to not bottom out. Ultimately I wanted more spring resistance and ordered 100 Cherry MX White switches.
I then ordered and waited for some printed circuit boards and a chassis to arrive from the Netherlands to the USA. Took forever. In the meantime I also got ahold of the electronics I'd need like the diodes, cables, Teensy board, etc.
I'd share links but I can't even find the company because the name was in another language. (Found It: Fablatech.pl At some point I started collecting the keycaps I wanted too. I ordered solder, a solder gun and holder, and braided desolder, on and on. This took several months, lots of research, and at least $200.
After a couple of evenings of soldering, messing up, wiring jumpers, messing up more, breaking the chassis... I ended up with this:
That's a look at some of the internals from behind. Here's the finished product before I added some tenting. I did some woodworking to make them both tilt outwards by 15 degrees. You can also see my custom USB cables I had woven somewhere in the UK.
When I put this together, I tried to type Qwerty on it and it simply wouldn't compute. I don't know what it was, probably the independent hands. I figured if I had to retrain my brain I might as well connect those neural pathways to Dvorak. So I made the full leap.
Convenience, Speed, & Health
I have a mouse with four or five extra buttons on them that I tied to specific functions like moving all windows to see the desktop, minimizing all windows, and more. I wanted to do more of that with the keyboard, even replicating the mouse without adding a trackpoint, etc. Today I finally finished. I had to create a virtual environment, clone a github folder, write a keymap in C and then compile it into a hex file the Teensy could be flashed with.
I wasted at least an hour trying to find a missing comma. I forgot how annoying debugging in compiler languages.
This is what I ended up with. Cut, Copy, Paste, macros for screenshots, two extra layers, one for Qwerty in case someone else needs to use the keyboard, and one for the mouse. I can drive the mouse around and left and right click all without moving my hands from the home row.
There's so many buttons and layers that I've been having to make up stuff to put on the keys. You can see I have a blank key on the right thumb cluster. If you guys have any suggestions... I thought about a text expander for email addresses with modifier keys so I can pop them out in two key presses. Not sure though, it's blank for now.
I'm typing all of this on this keyboard. I'm probably up to 50-60 words per minute again. Within a few more months I suspect I'll jump up to 110-120 WPM, busting my old records.
_____
Anyways, this is half of showing off my creation and half wanting to help others make the jump to Dvorak or explore normal looking mechanical keyboards or even these whacky ones. If you ask, I have answers. Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed the pics and concepts.
Hand Pain
Around four years ago the symptoms of arthritis and carpal tunnel finally started picking up. I even had a period where my entire left arm from elbow down was numb for a week straight. I've been putting in 8+ hours a day on a computer and since graduating high school more like 15+ hours. This has been going on since I was 9 or 10 back in the Windows 3.1 days. I'm now well into my 30's.
I had enough sense to get an ergonomic chair and hit the gym constantly. But when it came to typing I'd let my wrists sag and I'd pound the keys like a madman. It caught up with me and I slowly enacted the change that leads me to this post.
I started learning about mechanical keyboards and remembered how that was basically the default option when I was taking a keyboarding class in middle school. These new chicklet keys with rubber scissors and dome switches were destroying my hands. Yeah they look cool and sleek but are horrible for health. So I was determined to buy a mech and did, but I'll leave that chapter out because it gets better...
The first real thing I did was start learning the Dvorak layout, the first one designed for efficiency instead of Qwerty, which was designed to demo typewriters and keep those key arms from binding up. There are more layouts now like Colemak but Dvorak has wide adoption.
Mechanical Keyboard
After learning about the switches and whether I wanted a click, bump, and how much pressure and distance I wanted for each keypress, I finally ordered a Poker 2 keyboard. They're on #3 now. I used it till I destroyed the switches and had to decide if I wanted to fix it or build an...
Ergodox
I enjoyed Cherry MX Brown switches. They required more effort to push than chicklets but with a long enough travel distance to be able to train my hands to not bottom out. Ultimately I wanted more spring resistance and ordered 100 Cherry MX White switches.
I then ordered and waited for some printed circuit boards and a chassis to arrive from the Netherlands to the USA. Took forever. In the meantime I also got ahold of the electronics I'd need like the diodes, cables, Teensy board, etc.
After a couple of evenings of soldering, messing up, wiring jumpers, messing up more, breaking the chassis... I ended up with this:
Convenience, Speed, & Health
I have a mouse with four or five extra buttons on them that I tied to specific functions like moving all windows to see the desktop, minimizing all windows, and more. I wanted to do more of that with the keyboard, even replicating the mouse without adding a trackpoint, etc. Today I finally finished. I had to create a virtual environment, clone a github folder, write a keymap in C and then compile it into a hex file the Teensy could be flashed with.
I wasted at least an hour trying to find a missing comma. I forgot how annoying debugging in compiler languages.
There's so many buttons and layers that I've been having to make up stuff to put on the keys. You can see I have a blank key on the right thumb cluster. If you guys have any suggestions... I thought about a text expander for email addresses with modifier keys so I can pop them out in two key presses. Not sure though, it's blank for now.
I'm typing all of this on this keyboard. I'm probably up to 50-60 words per minute again. Within a few more months I suspect I'll jump up to 110-120 WPM, busting my old records.
_____
Anyways, this is half of showing off my creation and half wanting to help others make the jump to Dvorak or explore normal looking mechanical keyboards or even these whacky ones. If you ask, I have answers. Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed the pics and concepts.
