Split ergonomic keyboard project

[bpiphany]

NKRO over USB is already alive and kicking in the tmk_keyboard firmware. Someone just needs to either port that to the ErgoDox or implement the same stuff in the ErgoDox firmware.

[ic07]

It's on my list :) - but macro recording is taking *forever* o_o . And I've become paranoid of making promises about features till I've already implemented them, lol.

[damorgue]

It's on my list - but macro recording is taking *forever* o_o . And I've become paranoid of making promises about features till I've already implemented them, lol.

That on the other hand is a feature which should be implemented in Hasu's firmware. Does the yours support media keys or mx lock keys yet? Why you all work together instead?

[ic07]

It's on my list - but macro recording is taking *forever* o_o . And I've become paranoid of making promises about features till I've already implemented them, lol.

That on the other hand is a feature which should be implemented in Hasu's firmware. Does the yours support media keys or mx lock keys yet? Why you all work together instead?

Well... it currently doesn't support anything, since it's not working yet, lol. What I'm trying to do though, if it works, will play back keypresses - and therefore support recording and playing back anything you could do by typing on the keyboard yourself. I should probably note though that I'm really not sure how I'm going to implement things at the user level yet - i.e. how the firmware will decide which key is being remapped, and when to start recording keys. It will depend a lot on how clean the various options are to implement, and I'm only hoping at this point that I'll be able to do it well. Also, to be honest, I need to get it working and test it before I'll be sure that I can do it without running out of RAM or slowing everything down too much. So there are still things that could kill this feature. But I seem to be making progress

As for working together, probably the reason that we don't is that I was a complete beginner when I started my firmware, and completely incapable of understanding what was going on in anyone else's, lol. And by the time I got to the point where there was some hope in that regard, it had become much more fun to hack on my own. Hasu (and bpiphany) did help me at least once though, that I can recall: IIRC, Hasu pointed out (and bpiphany confirmed) that I needed to allow time for the pin voltage to stabilize when scanning the matrix. Really grateful to them for that; not sure if I ever would have figured it out on my own, lol.

[Kaleb]

PS2 is even less supported... lol. Our chip doesn't have hardware support for it, so we'd have to bit-bang the protocol over separate pins and tie those to the USB pins... non-trivial (and possibly messy) firmware extension, irritating hardware mod... :/

OK, I see.
(I was thinking about Soarer's converter... that's why I asked.)

The USB full NKRO supposedly works well with Windows,
and that's what I use mostly anyways.
Thanks

[maxrunner]

Ah, one more question. On the German keyboard there is a key with < and >.
How can I get this key?

That should be either NUBS (non-US back slash) or NUHS (non-US hash). In MassDrop's Ergodox configurator its under Misc -> [nonUS_Backslash_Pipe or nonUS_Pound_Tilde].

im at the massdrop page but i can't see the configurator, where can i see it?

[domoaligato]

so this is what kit 6 - ergodox complete kit looks like in the DSA dolch blanks groupbuy
it has been changed to a complete kit!
http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=44912.0

[Madderoftime]

I was planning on buying 4 of the kits but trying to find the keys as well for this. My daily drivers are a pair of Advantage Pro Kinesis and I wanted to follow the same basic layout. I am rather new to the custom keyboards and could use some help finding some nice double shot sphericals for them. Like the ones in the picture. Could someone help me out there? I've been reading posts for days and it seems I have missed all the group buys that would even come close to what I am looking for. Blue with white, black with blue, black and white any of those would match the ErgoDox nicely.

wallpaper-1015330.jpg (52.64 KiB) Viewed 13275 times

Also pictures of the kits show that there are a large amount of LEDs yet the PCB only has place for 6 of them. Is there a way to make the keys entirely backlit besides complete mod wiring or PCB from the ground up?
Sorry if this is not the place for this - obviously new to the community.

[ic07]

Welcome to DT

The pictures of the kits are slightly misleading in that respect. Actually, the PCB design (and default firmware) only supports 3 LEDs (on the right hand side). There was someone (on geekhack; I forget if he posted here) who modded 3 LEDs into the left hand side. And there are a couple people (again on geekhack) talking about maybe doing a full backlighting mod. But it's likely to be a pretty tedious mod in any case, unless there's a second rev of the PCB that supports it some time in the future.

Dunno anything about key caps, sorry

[Madderoftime]

Thanks!
I was looking at it and it would not be that difficult to water jet out a space for a Arduino in the fullhand case and then mounting the LEDs again is not difficult. Small jig and a highspeed mill and clearing out the cherry switch covers would be easy too. Piggyback off the power for the board or doublestack mini usb port to program. Modding is such a interesting and even educational experience.
Keys "look" like SA r3 PBT deepdish (which I still am looking for as the dream set) but hard to tell. I had a old IBM typewriter in college that had something like those. Miss that thing more than the woman that sold it in a garage sale on me for sure. Come to think of it that was one of the reasons she's gone. :O

[Muirium]

SA? Those are pretty damn tall. A more common profile is the shorter spherical DSA:

DSA has the unusual advantage of being uniform across all rows. You can move them all around the keyboard, and they still feel right. It's the one I'd put on an ergo. In fact, here's an active DSA group buy for the Ergodox among other things.

As for SA, there's often rumblings of a group buy for those. I must admit I'd like some too. They're the closest thing in Cherry mount to the Topre HiPro.

[Madderoftime]

I saw that GB and would even love to get in on it but we would like to have legends on the keys. That GB is for blanks which you can just go by them from the Signature Plastics site exactly what you want if that was the desire. I did send some notes out asking if I was too late for some others that are for DSA (second choice and could even be used on my Kinesis if I want. SAs are a bit cramped on there I heard) So the search continues. Ordered a few ErgoDox sets anyway. Keys will show up somehow. Just got to.

[nodnerb]

Just wanted to say "Thanks" to all of the people responsible for this remarkable project, esp. Dox, Bpiphany and IC07. I don't know if you guys are getting anything from Massdrop, but if you have a donation method, let us know. I'm sure there are many of us who would like to make sure you are rewarded for your efforts!

I finished construction this week and am just loving my Ergodox with Clears. I bottom out less than with my Kinesis and once I finalise my layout and get the right keycaps I will have the keyboard to see me through to retirement.

[mintberryminuscrunch]

...
I was looking at it and it would not be that difficult to water jet out of space...

I keep on misreading it

[ic07]

Just wanted to say "Thanks" to all of the people responsible for this remarkable project, esp. Dox, Bpiphany and IC07. I don't know if you guys are getting anything from Massdrop, but if you have a donation method, let us know. I'm sure there are many of us who would like to make sure you are rewarded for your efforts!

I finished construction this week and am just loving my Ergodox with Clears. I bottom out less than with my Kinesis and once I finalise my layout and get the right keycaps I will have the keyboard to see me through to retirement.

It seems that Dox and bpiphany (and litster, who designed the plate layer case; and just about everyone who was part of the discussion early on, lol) don't really monitor this thread anymore (though, a lot of people still watch the geekhack thread). In any case, except for maybe one donation to Dox (who had the highest prototyping costs), I don't believe any of us have received anything. But I'd feel horrible accepting without the other guys, and it's not like we haven't been reimbursed in non-monetary ways (it's been awesome being part of this project), so I'm afraid there is no donation method; at least not right now. It is really nice of you though, and encouraging to hear someone still willing to donate to the creators even after spending $200+ on a kit. So thanks! And I hope it serves you well for as long as you have a use for it

[webwit]

I pissed them off by criticizing massdrop for their shitty terms. Apparently they mistook this place for an opinion moderated forum.

[ic07]

Lol, webwit, you pissed them off by being rude . I don't really hold it against you though, personally, since (as you've mentioned before) you are very consistent about allowing others the same freedom of expression.

[webwit]

Nah, I had an intelligent opinion about massdrop, the prima donnas did not because they did not give a fuck, yet wanted to monopolize opinion and attacked dt members for having an opinion about this company ("SHUT UP, SHUT UP"). That is incredibly rude. Wankers.

[rknize]

The MassDrop-is-evil tangent, while interesting, was a distraction in a thread that was trying to focus on supporting the Ergodox project. That thread finally got split as requested:

http://deskthority.net/marketplace-f11/ ... 5-510.html

...but only after Dox had already his fill and left. Last I checked he had moved on to working on a DataHand clone. I suspect that the Ergodox is not very interesting to him at the moment.

[webwit]

I remember that thread split really pissed of the Demongolator. Took him hours, but then they told him it was all wrong, because what they really wanted was only the negative sentiment about Massdrop to be moved elsewhere. Oh well. I'm glad he is on a new project. I hope he has found a closely moderated environment to discuss it.

[rknize]

No idea. He hasn't been active anywhere since March. There is a parallel DataHand clone project being done by OldDataHands. He's got a working prototype already.

[Soarer]

... because what they really wanted was only the negative sentiment about Massdrop to be moved elsewhere.

Bollocks.

Many posts with purely technical info and no mention of massdrop got moved, which was wrong.

Many posts simply stating facts about the massdrop buy got moved, which was wrong.

I for one never had any objection to the 'pro' massdrop posts - that were actually part of the argument- being moved.
(Read what I actually said at the time rather than twisting my words).

But that wasn't the goal, was it...

I hope he has found a closely moderated environment to discuss it.

[rethus]

Okay, apparently it's not so easy to implement international layouts.
Is there a way to get the German Umlaute öäü on this keyboard?

So if I switch my keyboardlayout to english (us qwerty) and type in the needed chars in the configurator, I should got the right Keycodes !?

[wasabah]

That should work, I guess. I did the same, but directly changed the code and compiled it.

[davkol]

BTW I haven't read the other thread, but has OJ's configuration software ever been publicly released?

[ic07]

Not to my knowledge. I think he lost interest after massdrop released theirs.

[jacobolus]

Folks here at Deskthority might also be interested in my new Geekhack thread, “fixing the ergodox thumb section”:
http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=62848

Some ideas:

[7bit]

I'm working on an improved version of the ErgoDox design, that fits into existing cases.

I've added support for Alps switches, a trackpoint hole and a mouse button.

It is possible to add LEDs to every switch. to be wired to a dedicated LED controller. But there are also some LED-pads that can be connected to the Teensy.

Now my question:
Is it possible to connect LEDs to that MCP23018-thing?


Here is how it looks like:

ErgoHype_PCB_00.png (464.97 KiB) Viewed 10799 times

[litster]

If you do want to change the layout that would require a new case design, I would be happy to make modification to my original ErgoDox case design.

[macmakkara]

HMM.. I believe that only difference at the moment is that trackpoint hole there? And PCB is only for 80key layout.