Np lol, don’t think I could have found it if I looked myself, and hadn’t seen it before. What would I search? “Massive fuck all keyboard”? I’d assume I’d get quite a list of results rivaling the keyboard itself in size.
Sorry if my previous comment sounded rude, re-reading it made it sound like I was chastising you. Apologies for that.
I really loved that channel when it was just the one hilarious girl doing it but I fell off around the ice baths episode. Felt like I didn’t know what the channel was about anymore, kinda like when Reply All shifted
They have all been involved since the beginning afaik, but the others didn’t make videos in the beginning. It’s always been an exploration of various things rather than being a specific topic. The best way I would describe it is scientific method the channel but that’s not entirely accurate, it’s like the journey is the destination, of going through the motions of accomplishing whatever task they set out to do in the beginning of the video.
(Basing this on what they have described in other videos when talking about their history)
It started as a joke but then I posted the layout from KLE on the 40% Discord and things got out of hand and the next thing I knew I was reaching out to manufacturers on Alibaba.
Could you elaborate some into your experience on Alibaba? That case is gorgeous. I’d love to hear more about the process and costs. (I have an mATX project I’d like to put in a custom little box.)
For sure! As far as process, I came up with the layout using keyboard-layout-editor.com and from there I designed the PCB in KiCad and the switch plate and case with Fusion 360. The case took a lot of trial and error to get everything fitting right so I made a lot of 3d printed prototypes before I was satisfied with it. After I had my printed prototype done I basically went on Alibaba and searched for manufacturers who had keyboard cases listed as products they could make and I messaged a bunch of them asking for quotes on 1, 3, and 25 cases (I was trying to decide on 1 or 3 prototypes and then 25 will be the minimum order quantity if it makes it to group buy). The one that gave me the lowest price was also the company that someone I’ve been getting advice from has used on group buys he’s done, so I ended up going with them since he vouched for their quality.
The cost goes up quite a bit as the order quantity decreases, so this prototype was expensive. After shipping and fees and everything, it was over $600. I probably wouldn’t have paid it if I hadn’t just gotten a tax refund honestly. Some of the other manufacturers that I talked to had slightly lower prices for smaller order quantities but they were too expensive for the group buy quantity.
That’s about the price I was expecting, really does need to be at least a group buy to make sense! Or a tax refund :)
Was there anything you have to do to translate the model from FDM plastic to the manufactured prototype? At $600 I’d be worried that I have snug plastic that becomes too loose or impossible to fit in a different material.
Oh I was very worried that something wouldn’t fit right once I got the prototype; mostly the USB cutout. I did like 20 printed prototypes with little adjustments to the cutout until I was as confident as I could be, but I still wasn’t positive it would fit because of differing tolerances but thankfully my printer was pretty much spot on with what I got from the manufacturer.
This is it for me, I basically don’t use those keys daily and can access them via a function key when I rarely need them, so I’m gonna prioritise the aesthetics and compactness.
Point 2 is absolutely subjective, though. Personally, I think a full size or TKL look a lot better than a compact. It’s too distracting seeing something “missing” from a traditional setup. Though, I also like to have my keyboard and mouse a good distance from each other and spread out, rather than close and centered in front of me.
They are right though. Check between the barrel plate and the metal back plate. Model Ms use a trio of membranes to detect key strokes. It is part of why they sound so much deeper, more robust, and less pingy than model Fs. Model Ms are membrane keyboards and that is a good thing.
Lmao, I wouldn’t want to share a room with someone else with one.
For anyone not in the know, when I said discreet I meant modular switches like MX or alps. Buckling springs all share a common barrel plate and sending assembly. It is why you can’t just have a single loose buckling spring switch really.
I’m one of those weirdos who actually really likes using a smaller keyboard so I’ll give you a few reasons I like smaller keyboard and a few why I don’t like larger ones.
First of all, desk space. I have a very small desk so not having the numpad makes for a lot more space for my mouse.
I also find when gaming that my arms fall at a weird and uncomfortable angle when I have the keyboard and mouse at a comfortable distance apart.
I don’t tend to use the numpad, or 9 key cluster above the arrow keys very often so the ones I do use (delete, Pg up and Pg down) are just mapped to a new layer. My board is ortholinear so I’ve also got the numpad mapped to a layer if I ever want to use it.
The function row is also re-mapped over the number row with the - and + acting as 11 and 12 because I very rarely need to use a function key and a number key at the same time or in quick succession so theres no need for the seperate keys.
I don’t program much but when I do, I’ve got all the relevant symbols labelled with their layers on the front of the cap so they’re not hard to find when I need them.
I’m also very much not a tidy desk person and I do a lot of my hobby work at my desk so having a nice small keyboard I can cram wherever I can when I need it and just move out of the way when I don’t means I’m not always shuffling stuff around my desk to make space for this huge keyboard.
Overall however, I just really like the look of a nice, small, compact keyboard with everything I need just there. It’s visually nice to have a uniform block of keys with no gaps, no larger or differently shaped keys, and that’s just not something a larger keyboard offers me.
I can absolutely see how this sort of thing doesn’t work for most people because there is an element of having to re-learn muscle memory and such, but for most people that have tried it, they seem to find that when it works, it works very well!
Don’t give me any ideas, I have an immersion circulator and this is exactly the stupid kind of shit that gets me in trouble with the wife.
Although now that you mention it, if I could figure out a good tempurature to increase the elasticity of the tape I could get a better seal around the chips and… yeah prolly better not.
Uh… Just buy an off the shelf model. Keychron and Leopold make good keyboards for example. I’m sure others will post other recommendations, but what’s your budget, which continent do you need it shipped to? Maybe you have local tech shops that sell computer peripherals.
Yeah, I’m really happy with my Leopold which I’ve been using for the past 3 months. I used to have Unicomp before that; and while the typing feel was a little better than the brown switches I currently have on the Leopold, its build quality was lower, and eventually it just died on me thanks to what I later found out was a notoriously failure-prone controller they used to use back then. I’m told that Unicomp’s build quality has improved a lot since then.
… though the frustrating thing is that I was able to get the Unicomp only because I was living in the US at the time; and the Leopold I got thanks to relatives in S. Korea. Where I live, ‘mechanical keyboard’ is treated like a synonym for ‘gamer keyboard’, and all the BS associated with that.
So excellent off the shelf brands exist, though one has to do some local research first.
When you hit Q, A, and Z at the same time it spits this out
You guys always kill me because it’s like you come up with a funny idea for a keyboard meme product and then someone spends actual effort mocking it up or making a CAD model and then someone decides to actually make it and you spend real money on it because nobody had the sense to just say “this is actually stupid” somewhere along the way.
Ethan Iverson has a pretty interesting article about jazz pianists and how their individual styles changed (or didn’t) over the course of their careers, and he noted that IIRC many pianists whose technique was mainly finger-focused had a significant shift in style later in life versus pianists whose technique involved more arm movement.
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