My first ergo split prototype finally came alive! - Lemmy.world
More pics: https://imgur.com/a/iYK45eQ [https://imgur.com/a/iYK45eQ] I’ve been
lurking r/emk for a while and never shared anything useful, but since Lemmy
community is getting traction, I thought it’s a good opportunity to brag a
little. I just got the first prototype of my custom ergo board working a few
days ago. It still has no plate, no name, no case and a few things I’d like to
tweak eventually, but I’m very happy about my first PCB design and first time I
used KiCAD not turning into a piece of junk immediately. I’ve been looking at a
lot of thumb cluster designs and asking some people using all the kyrias,
hillsides, irises and such how usable/comfortable the upper keys are and decided
to try out something like Pinky4/RockOn/pinkies out in hope of having a
comfortable 4 key thumb cluster on a flat keyboard. I’m still getting used to it
and slowly developing muscle memory, but I think it’s a moderate success. I use
the upper keys as layer toggle and it’s not bad if a little unfamiliar. I’ve
also considered going splayed for a moment, but decided to go with 1.5u pinky
column, so I can place my pinky anywhere I like and it’s an absolute joy. I love
the look and feel. Sourcing keycaps is definitely a little awkward, but I only
use blank DSA anyway. Having some troubles with setting up my first handwired
split I never got around to finish, then my Let’s Split PCB from falbatech,
which I never got to finish (see the pattern?) I decided to go with single MCU
design and was unsure about the connector until I saw cheapino by tompi and I
knew that was it. Very sturdy and solid connection. However the standard cat5
cable is a little too stiff for my liking and I’m gonna look for something more
flexible. I’m happy to see my first PCB design work, however, it’s not without
its flaws. I copied the design from cheapino, but didn’t notice that some pins
on the RJ45 are messed up and I had to make a custom cable, or one row pin would
be permanently shorted to ground. Another issue is that I forgot to measure the
footprint for RP2040Zero I got from SadekBaroudi (thank you for awesome
repository and your boards being a huge inspiration) so it can’t be mounted from
underneath the PCB as I originally planned. This will make designing the plate a
little more difficult. That being said, I’m really happy with what I achieved.
The board is comfy, PCBs from JLCPCB are great quality and programming RP2040 is
much less tedious and forgiving than pro micro, with the added benefit of a USB
socket that doesn’t break away the minute you look at it with too much force. It
has support for both hot-swap and soldered low profile Gateron KS-27 switches,
that are cheap and pretty cool in my opinion and the spacing is a little tighter
at 18.5mm making the board pretty portable. (Aside from the switches falling out
of the sockets due to lack of the plate I still haven’t got enough time to cut
out) I also broke my fear of PCB design and the whole “I’m too dumb for this.”
I’m nowhere near finished with this one, however I don’t know how long it will
take me to make the plate, case and another revision of PCB, since I already
started using it as a daily driver and I love it. Once I finish everything I
planned, I will open source the PCB, CAD and QMK files. Hope you enjoy it.
Cheers, Arth. PS: I’m so glad we’ve moved into a decentralised network, no
matter how good or bad Lemmy is. I only joined today, but for most of the
problems with today’s internet, FOSS is the answer. Great move!
