It has begun, my first ergo mech: a Piantor - Lemmy.world
“Sometimes you need to approach a new hobby and when you do, why not dive into
it?” Or somehow were the lines when, some weeks ago, I stumbled through the
concept of alternate keyboard layouts, had a talk to a colleague who uses Dvorak
(“Wait, I somehow just can’t type on your keyboard…!”), had a glimpse at Colemak
and finally thought “I just might” and embraced the concept of flushing my 80+
wpm 98% acc QWERTY-skills down the drain… Some days later I decided to go for
Colemak Mod-DH(m) as it seemed like a reasonable approach, wasn’t totally weird
and enjoys (mixed) support on the differrent platforms (Windows and Mac for
Work, Linux for private use). At it turns out basic Colemak has better OS
support but the second thought has already risen, using not the default keyboard
but going the road a little further and seek out ergo mech keyboards. Those are
usually programmable so the problem of OS-support completely solved itself.
First looks were at the Moonlander. However it struck me as being quite massive
and heavy, and expensive, too! So where’s that substancial improvement to my
normal mech keyb I usually type on? Then came along the Corne. It’s probably one
of the firsts keyboards one stumbles across when looking a little further than
pre-fabricated keyboards that check the ergo mech checkbox. I found some for
sale on the online flea market but, man, these were also pretty expensive; or
badly soldered or had RGBs, LCDs and other stuff - I think I could accept, but
not being a ricer and thinking about the reason for much of this is to not look
at your keyboard - that seemed pretty useless to me. So downgrading the “what it
must have” lead me to simpler, smaller and cheaper designs. What I also grasped
from the Corne and other “pioneers” of emks is, that they are based on quite old
chicps and concepts. Those having only a few pins and crude firmwares
necessaries the use of diodes and other, I may call them, workarounds. So came
the Cantor. It uses a larger chip with enough pinouts to just connect every
switch to a pin and be done with it. Perfect. Easier to solder, less stuff to
order and later potentially break. I liked the increased column stagger, too.
Ah, the column stagger. That was something I really looked forward to, having
being accustomed to the row stagger, which I subconciousnessly found an still
find weird and not making much sense. While digging through all the different
keybs (Sofle, Helix, and so many more) I narrowed down on the Cantor, just to
find the Piantor, a slightly revamped version using a Raspberry Pi Pico rather
than a quite exotic Black Pill, which might present itself as having a lower
market share and probably being more difficult to order. Now, that the prices
for electronics have settled down a bit after the Corona rise, it seemed like
the perfect time to get my hands dirty with soldering stuff so I began to
configure my soon-to-be new Piantor. I chose low profile keys. Not because I
find them easier to type on (my previous normal keyboard had MX) but because
when I make a change why not experiment with more than one variable? I usually
type on MX reds (linear, 50g) but having heard even lower force is better for
ergo mech keyboards I chose the Kailh Red Pro (linear, 35g). I also ordered a
mixed bag of other switches to try some of them out and a set of Light Blue /
Pink / gChock (linear, 20g) for the pinkes or just to try them out. So the
keyboard has to be hot swappable, which the Piantor can be, if you solder the
hotswap sockets and not the switches themselves. Keycaps: the “gold standard”
for Kailh Chocs: MBK with two specialized caps to indicate the two homing keys.
I thought about ordering caps with letters on them but then again I wnt to type
blindly, as I am accustomed to that already on QWERTY and I don’t want to be
needlessy tempted to look at the caps. So, soldering and sticking it all
together left me with the keyboard you see in the pictures. And I really like
the simple, clean look of it. Nothing more than needed, nothing less than having
everything one could wish for. The micro controllers were soldered to have them
not stick out too much and because I don’t intend to switch them; Micro USB is
totally fine for me, I have plenty of cables for this and the cables are much
cheaper than the USB C ones. also I never broke a plug in my whole life on any
hardware I own so they did not strike me as especially endangered to break when
being handled by me. I was unsure if I needed a case or if everything stays in
its place when used without and I can confirm that the switched do not fall off
or wobble at all. They sit very firm in the hotswap sockets and typing on the
keys just presses them back onto the PCB and into the sockets. It that is still
the case after switching them for several times is still to be experienced. But
lacking a case the underside had some sharp edges from the soldering and the
sockets. So I made a underside out of cardboard and stitched it in place through
the screw holes (can I have a patent on this, please?). It works perfectly and
only adds maybe 0,3 mm in height, is comfortable to use and costs literally
nothing. Feels pretty guerilla but actually looks quite nice and very slim and
light. For the first keyboard layout I chose Miryoku (it uses Colemak Mod-DH by
default), which leaves the outer key columns unused, but in case I want wo
experiment with a different layout later, I can reactivate the keys. The outer
colums can be broken off but I still want to keep my flexibility in case I want
to use those later. The default Miryoku layout was okay. I later switched to
INVERTED_T, which re-arranges the cursor keys a bit as I’m no vi user and wanted
a more easy cursor layout. Programming the keyboard is simple as the firmware
provides a Vial interface so using the application to rearrange the keys was
very very easy. I also found a Miryoku via file which I could use to kickstart
everything in a very short manner. It had a few misbound keys and Mac-bindings,
too, but those were easily fixed. So, that’s the story how I became a ergo mech
keyb user; it all started with the innocent curiosity to experiment with an
alternate keyboard layout - and only in the end it closed the circle. How my
learing of Colemak went in the meantime is a different story, for a different
time :D (… that damned 60 wpm plateau x_x’ ) Additionally here’s a gallery with
some more pictures: https://imgur.com/a/JU1gTpn [https://imgur.com/a/JU1gTpn] I
hope you like it! Have fun :)
