The multitouch gestire would be kinda unusable, but for scrolling I suggest to steal the same gestire from the japanese Toshiba laptops. They have a circular trackpad and for scrolling use the Edge of the trackpad with clockwise and counter-clockwise movement.
I know that I made It sound confusing, but if you see a video of that in action Will be Easy af to understand!
Tbh, I saw ben vallackās videos that used ergogen to build some keyboard - but I didnāt put that much effort trying to learn kicad; this Will be my excuse to try that out! At the same time, Joe scotto tempted with his guide to handwiring and it felt like a breeze, but It Is a time consuming process that can lead to a lot of problems if It isnāt used a good soldering iron.
Still thank you for the tip on the grid size and angles! Surely Will Speed up the process
Thank you for the question, I tried a more circular low angled thumb cluster (you can see it on the top left plate) and it has its pros and cons:
As you stated the pro is the confort because our thumb movement are circular and not linear;
On the other hand the angled linear solution i found gave me the chance to fit a magnetic disc under the thumb cluster and felt more aesthetically pleasing, also because this keyboard is inspired by the little nine-nano by bsag (that has a linear thumbcluster)!
So i found that in good balance between confort, aestethic and functionality!
You have mentioned two keyboards that took your attention the Piantor and the Moonlander.
So letās breakdown them, and letās see the major benefits:
If you have to travel a lot and dont want to spend much to try a new cup of tea, you should go for the piantor; itās cheap, really easy to build (thanks to the diodeless feature), tentable (see on the community for tentable case) and portable!
Instead if you donāt need to travel and you are sure that you want to switch go for the moonlander; Despite itās high price it has a really large community and itās built to make the average user feel at home. With the number row, tentable, full-size mx switches; itās a really good option if you dont have to travel that much!
If you want a middleground of those, I can suggest the Sofle, it is a very popular keyboard too and has a number row;
This is the beauty of this community, everyone has itās preference and we love to build keebs on those!
Let us know what will you take and your feedbacks!