If it’s just two PC’s and no video, it’s easy. There are plenty of cheap USB hubs in the €20-€30 range with a toggle switch.
I have a good experience with a ugreen branded switch that I got from Amazon. I bought it to toggle between my PC and work laptop when I started to work from home during covid.
Might have something to do with tap hold configuration, though im not sure which one. This applies to almost all key interactions in qmk, so its worth to at least understand the underlying principle.
Thanks for the link. I am using tap-hold quite a bit.
I made a mistake going straight for a 36 board. I was a pretty fast touch typer, but I can’t seem to get the settings tweaked such that I’m not either having annoying delays waiting for layer shifts, or getting accidental layer shifts. And because (I know it’s not the most minimal) so many keys have to be in layers, it’s really put a cramp both in my speed, and my confidence (that I typed what I think I typed, especially when I’m transposing).
I have less trouble with kanata, even with very similar layer configurations. After I got this board configured, I changed my kanata layout to match, and I get much more accuracy out of kanata. I’ve started thinking maybe I should just go to a minimal QMK layout - no layers, etc - and use kanata instead. Or, if there’s a way to extrapolate a QMK config from how kanata’s behavior is programmed.
Personally, most of my 36 and below boards are programmed such that i’d rely on tap dance less. I’d rather put it in a layer, explode it inside the layer for things like parantheses and brackets, or arrange a combo for things that are frequently used but cannot be assigned into a designated first layer.
Partially because I already have a layout that works on a bigger 40% boards, but another factor of it is how awkward tapdance have always felt to me.
As for the kanata thing: can’t say I can comment further as I’ve never used it before.
I tend to use tap-dance for modifiers, like my thumb Esc is also Alt, because one I tap (and never hold) and the other I always hold (and has no use taped). Having (e.g.) a key only dedicated to Alt is a wasted key; Alt isn’t a good key to have on a layer; and it would be not only annoying to have to tap a layer switch key to get to Alt, and even then there’d be a chording issue where you still need to have access to all your keys and Alt so you can type chords like Ctrl-Alt-X.
How do you manage the four(-ish) modifier keys without tap-dance, or having dedicated, single-purpose keys for them? On a 36, that’s 11% of the keyboard dedicated to modifiers (Ctrl, Shift, Meta, Alt) at best, or 19% if you make use of the fact that there are left/right distinctions for three of those keys (is there a Right Meta?).
Honestly, I’d be happy with a different solution. Modifier keys are hard enough; I still have trouble with accuracy with only three thumb keys. I had an ErgoDox for years and never really used all twelve of the thumb keys; it was just too hard to reliable hit that inner column.
For that matter, how do you do layer switches without tap dance, or dedicated keys? Are you using momentary layers, or layer switch? Are they dedicated layer keys, and if so, where are your modifiers keys and things like space/return? Can you post your config so I can load it in Vial and look at it?
I might misunderstood some terms here, but I feel like our understanding of what tap-dance is might be different.
That said, here’s an ilustration of what I got on my Minidox. I also use something similar on my QAZ, although that one got 32 keys instead of 36.
Edit: actually, I think the latest version got the whole semicolon and Backspace switched. The semicolon button is backspace by default and P + Backspace gives me semicolon. Main reasoning are: rarely use semicolon and fighting the primal urge of pinky finger to backspace is hard (I rotate between sub40s and 40s at least once a week)
Oh, Yeah. I’m just calling it what Vial/QMK calls it. I don’t think the *Dox’s use vanilla QMK - they have their own proprietary firmware and configuration format (ZSA), although I think it is based on QMK. I did a bunch of research on this once because I got tired of having to use Oryx and wanted to use a desktop app like Vial, and eventually found out they’re incompatible.
Tap-dance in QMK terms is different behavior of a key based on whether it’s tapped or held; there’s a hold timeout where it can go into repeat if no other key is typed while it’s held, and it can also be configured to have different behavior on double-tap and tap+hold. I haven’t yet set up any double-taps, but I used them a lot in my ErgoDox because of all of the extra in the middle.
Yes, you can bind something to the other spacebar. Shift, a FN key, backspace, enter, a letter, whatever you want. Normally you would have 8 fingers on the alpha cluster (the letters) and use a thumb for space thus using 9 digits (before someone comes after me for calling thumbs fingers lol). By splitting the space you effectively gain the ability to type with all your digits by giving each thumb a separate key. You can also split the space in more than two keys. Personally I quite like two keys per thumb.
But then you can’t double tap the space bar machine gun style. Jk, sounds smart. Which side do you usually leave for space? I imagine that gets significant more user than the other.
People usually use either their left or right thumb for space (some bring a finger down instead of using a thumb). Whatever side you are used to, you would keep space at in your split space layout. For me that is the right side. The other one is shift for me so it does also get a lot of use, but yes the right one gets used more frequently.
I haven’t tried home row mods, but I really should. I use a Mac most of the time, so most of the stuff I would do with F keys is just mapped to media controls on the third layer. I’ve barely even used any of the QAZ boards on Windows since I pretty much only use W for gaming.
This picture is very concerning due to the lack of letters and punctuation on some of these keyboards. One has “QAZ” in the wrong place, two more lack those letters entirely, and one has gone so far as to remove “L” too. What psychopath designed these?
That psychopath would be me (for the pink one and the black one, the green one is a vault 35). If you want to have your eyes opened, the black one with the QAZ on the right has an interest check going on now.
For letters and punctuation though? Seriously? Like, okay, lesser used punctuation like carets, tildes, lesser/greater than, stuff like that seems reasonable to stick behind a layer. Letters though?
chording (using multiple hotkeys to redefine the char set) requires retraining and mental overhead and can lead to errors. no thanks. I don’t even like the superset buttons on laptops, fuck fn keys etc.
I understand removing numpads for people who don’t enter a lot of numbers since you have a second set, but removing things beyond that, I don’t know, I don’t get it. I don’t even think I can give up my function row (f1-f12)
So about gaming… A couple weeks ago I had a dream that I was gaming and my friend told me I was playing poorly because of my keyboard so then we got in a fight. I usually use a 65% for gaming but last week someone convinced me I could use the Vault 35 (green one on the bottom left) so I tried it last week. It went okay after I got everything mapped the way I wanted but then at one point I accidentally turned off my gaming layer and the friend who I got in a fight with in the dream started to get annoyed so I pretended my game was messing up. Then I came clean the next day and he said “fuck you”.
Moral of the story is I’m going to continue gaming on the 35%.
Oh, the mechanical keyboard hobby has a rabbit hole for damn near every preference you’ve ever idly entertained for even a moment. There’s an antire category of boards “Alice or Arisu” that does a similar split, though only a few have any slope along the left-to-right axis.
Then here on lemmy there’s !ergomechkeyboards which is a little corner of the ergo community. They are NOT fucking around with their typing devices.
As someone who uses a 40s keyboard (no numbers row, kinda similar to the bottom middle keyboard in OP’s pic): my wrist pain that I got from typing 4-6 hours a day was gone once I started using them, because they’re compact and I don’t have to move my hands/wrists at all. When I type with a full-sized keyboard, I have to move my wrist when I want to type numbers, for example. Now I can type for 8+ hours a day without worrying about pain.
Of course, keyboards are all personal preference! That’s why I love the mech keyboard community, seeing all the different layouts and shapes people tailor to use for themselves.
It’s got lubed KTT Strawberries in it right now. I was going to go with North Poles but I could not get them to fit so I put those in the Mod 005. The caps on the KBt are Drop Dasher which I fell in love with after watching Severance.
I use one of these to control 2 PCs and one laptop with a single keyboard and mouse. It could actually run a 4th machine off the same keyboard and mouse if I wanted to cram another into my workspace.
Sharing two 4k monitors between the three as well, though the screens have nothing to do with the switch controlling keyboard and mouse.
Used some double sided tape to attach the little controller switch to the top of the docking station connecting my laptop to the displays and network as it’s a light little thing that would fly all over the place otherwise. Been using the same one for over 2 years now and it’s been working great!
Tried some more expensive solutions in an attempt to tie my monitors and network together along with the kbm and everything I tried had some kind of unacceptable compromise, like bad video quality.
It started as a joke for my friend who doesn’t understand how I use a 35% but then some people seemed interested so I actually made it.
I’ve been using it for about a month now and use the QAZ keys for macros. I have tried actually using them as Q, A, and Z, too and it was actually easier than I expected.
If you leave off the amusing extra keys on the side of this one, the idea of “40%” boards (actual percentage of 104 keys varies) is to minimize finger movement while touch typing and to move lesser-used keys onto one or more Fn layers like laptops (or really most keyboards these days) have.
I don’t really touch type, so while I still like weird stuff (and make it myself), the 40s scene is a bit lost on me, though my very first hand-wired keyboard build was a “Planck” (somewhat similar to this but with the keys in a perfect grid) with three extra keys.
Even for people who do touch type, there’s a definite learning curve when you move to a 40% or lower board. I found that the muscle memory starts to build up pretty quickly so after a bit of stumbling around I got used to smaller keyboards without too much trouble. The main problem now is when I try to write code on anything larger than a 40% I make constant typos.
Aten/IO Gear work well. There’s rarely any problems. If something goes wrong, a power cycle fixes it. If I’m buying again, I might go for the Level1Techs.
Slow switching is normal. In my case it takes 3-4 seconds for all the USB devices to get reconnected to the other machine.
If the keyboard or mouse doesn’t work in the dedicated ports, you can use the general USB port with a hub. I had a keyboard that wouldn’t work using the built-in port.
If you have particular problems with Bluetooth it might be EMI noise. Put the receiver on an extension cable.
IO Gear is also Aten and is available retail. I have the GCS1934 which I use daily. Came with nice cables and all. Unfortunately all DisplayPort KVMs are super expensive.
DVI is cheap, HDMI is reasonable, then there’s DP. If you can get away with DVI or HDMI you could save some money. Personally I didn’t want HDMI for the future proofing as well as the DP version I got supports multiple monitors per port allowing to bug a smaller KVM for multi monitor use. I haven’t tested the multi monitor functionality yet. 😅
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