I made a thing: a tool that allows programmable keyboards to send arbitrary Unicode characters. I created this mainly for myself, but I'm curious to know if there are other persons on this planet that could use it, so here it is:

https://crates.io/crates/infinikey

Because you didn't ask, here's my story. 😉

Ever since I bought a split ergonomic keyboard (2008, Kinesis Advantage 2), I have used an English keyboard layout at work despite being German and working in Germany. I think that for my field (software development), English layouts are just superior to the German one(s).

Still, I also need German umlaut characters for emails and chats in German. Back then I only used Windows at work, so using some Microsoft tool I created a custom keyboard layout. It mapped Ctrl-Alt-A to the letter ä, for example. The problem was that (some) software would still receive the Alt key and for example open its menu. So I built a script with AutoHotkey that handled these keypresses and that worked better. I installed the script on the work and home PCs, and when I got a new keyboard (2023, MoErgo Glove80) I started using it both at work and at home.

Fast forward to last year, when I started at a new company, and my department there does not use Windows but Linux - yay! However, that meant my AutoHotkey scripts no longer worked. 😢

I could probably have fiddled with xkb and things, but I really wanted _one_ solution that works on Linux and Windows. After several experiments (different approaches with XCompose/WinCompose and 'misusing' the Espanso text expander), a few months ago I finally decided I need to write my own software. And as of this week, it's not only good enough for daily use, but also published and installable by anyone! 🎉

Thanks for reading this far. Let me know if you're one of the maybe 10 to 100 persons in the world who have some use for this software. 🙂

#MechanicalKeyboard #Keyboard #FOSS #OpenSource #Rust #Glove80 #KinesisAdvantage #Windows #Linux #ZMK

How to improve battery life on the "central" side

https://piefed.zip/c/ergomechkeyboards/p/1474938/how-to-improve-battery-life-on-the-central-side

I obviously suck at soldering! My left thumb cluster just stopped working, which led to a new "opportunity" to learn - identifying what was wrong.

I never really bothered to look into how the circuits worked when building it the first time since I was busy learning to type on the split keyboard.

Tried out #deepseek v4 flash to help identify root causes and guiding me on how to debug it as part of testing how good this very cheap model is.

The guidance was solid, but I've soon ruled out most things without the error. At least I've learnt some (and removed the useless rotary knob that I tried out)...

#splitkb #electronics #keyboards #zmk

Sometimes, my day gets really surreal out of nowhere: https://youtu.be/rgZlzCd0DUU?t=1819&si=9aPL7w7zyXmmEdFa

#zmk #Keyboard

On est en train de rassembler les informations relatives au #Quacken sur une page web. Pour l’instant il n’y a que deux liens :

• la keymap #Selenium, par défaut sur le clavier ;
• le firmware #ZMK, pour configurer et flasher soi-même le #Poticlavier.

Promis, on étoffe tout ça au fur et à mesure !
https://onedeadkey.github.io/quacken/

one more ZMK module is out. this one is a replacement for the stock temp-layer behaviour. it does all the smart things with mouse buttons workflows and such. https://github.com/kaievns/zmk-mouse-layer

#zmk #keyboard #opensource

also, opensourced my custom ZMK input processors optimised for trackball data processing. mouse acceleration, smoothing, fully featured mouse layers support, etc.

https://github.com/kaievns/zmk-trackball-processors

#zmk #keyboard #opensource

published my latest pmw3610 optical sensor driver for ZMK as a stand alone module https://github.com/kaievns/pmw3610-zmk-driver

#zmk #keyboard #opensource

Keychron/Keychron-Keyboards-Hardware-Design

All the industrial design files for Keychron keyboards and mice. Includes CAD models (case, plate, stabilizer, encoder, keycap) for Q, Q Pro, Q HE, K Pro, K Max, K HE, V Max, P HE series and M1–M7 mice. 100+ models. STEP/DXF/PDF formats.

This project is source-available. Commercial use is strictly prohibited.
Language: Python

Stars: 1310 Issues: 4 Forks: 99
https://github.com/Keychron/Keychron-Keyboards-Hardware-Design

#3d_printing #cad #gaming #gaming_keyboard #gaming_mouse #hardware_designs #keyboard #keyboard_firmware #keychron #mechanical_keyboard #mouse #qmk #qmk_firmware #zephyr #zmk #zmk_firmware