SA Dasher & SA Dancer keycap sets (Completed)

[niomosy]

Not sure on quantity of Hack'd, honestly.

On one hand, the kit as it was laid out wasn't too bad. $120 for everything is pretty reasonable. It does mean you are going to likely end up with extra keys no matter what going that route but they were able to keep the costs of a full set pretty low for everyone.

[lumogas]

For what it's worth, colour me in (see what I did there?) as interested. Dark blue keys, pale blue modifiers. How would you sell them? And what switches would they be compatible with?

[zslane]

The group buy vehicle has yet to be determined. A lot still has to get hashed out regarding kit composition, particularly for the ISO and SPECIALTY kits. And it bears mentioning that each of the kits will have an SA Dancer version that I have yet to whip up renders for.

As for switches, we're talking Cherry MX mounts exclusively. That is the only switch that Signature Plastics supports with their SA family of keycaps.

[Muirium]

This GB has PMK written all over it. You don't want to run it yourself, which makes SP's own system the obvious choice.

And I like the idea of keeping things simple with a ballsy all or nothing design. Two kits. One called Dasher, one called Dancer. Everyone shares the cost of all the caps.

[zslane]

I think there will be some disagreement in here over which is the better/worse choice: PMK or MassDrop.

I wish Ctrl[Alt] wasn't in hibernation because they could have been a reasonable option.

[niomosy]

I think the big question with PMK right now is how well the system would work. As far as I've seen, no one has submitted anything for voting since the revamped site went live. We don't really know what kind of quantity SP is going to produce and they're not going to gather that info but produce whatever quantity they deem sufficient and put it up for us to purchase. It basically becomes a game of hitting F5 on the PMK site on a regular basis to make sure you get in on the deal before the existing supply is sold out.

Honestly, as problematic as MD can be with the way they handle child sets, they at least get purchase commitment out of people before anything is produced to allow more people to get in.

As you can probably guess, I'm biased toward MD right now. Time may change that but with the questions on the PMK system, I'm not convinced they're a good starting point. Probably a decent choice for follow-up runs, though.

[zslane]

Here is an "early draft" of the SPECIALTY kit. Consider it a starting point for discussion. I really have no idea what should go into it.

SA Dasher SPECIALTY Kit

dasher_specialty_ansi_01a.jpg (194.66 KiB) Viewed 5385 times

Note that for each SHIFT key (size) you see throughout the Dasher set, there will be a $50 charge to make its fixed legend plate. I'm assuming that this will be the first SA set to use my corrected vector definitions, so it will be the set that eats the cost of the new plates.

[zslane]

So here are some questions I have:

1. Should the ISO kit provide an "ALT GR" key?

2. Should the SPECIALTY kit provide spacebars of more sizes?

3. Should the SPECIALTY kit provide more blanks? If so, how many and in which sizes?

4. Along the lines of question 3 above, would anyone want twelve R1 blanks for the function row? The original Dasher keyboard had blanks for function keys.

[Muirium]

Nice work. Gotta say these renders of yours are tasty. Any plans to share the files? I'd like to try a few mockups myself, but my modelling skills are like my programming skills: evaporate the closer I get to the task!

I like what you've done in the spacebar row. 1.5u mods, with 1u Windows keys, and a 7u spacebar is absolutely right. Up on row 4, however, you want a 1u FUN or FN key to pair with the HHKB style 1.75u SHIFT. The HHKB doesn't take MX caps, of course, but its layout is a popular inspiration in custom keyboards. To support it, you also need row 1 backslash and 1.5u row 2 DELETE or BACKSPACE in mod colour, which goes in ANSI's backslash position on the HHKB.

Now, some answers:

1. Yes. As far as I'm aware. Alt Gr is the defining mod on ISO. I don't know for sure though because Macs don't use it. We have Option for all that instead, on ANSI too. But Alt Gr is always in demand amongst the PC guys in Europe.

2. Perhaps. That's a judgement call. Bear in mind that (besides absurd oddball blank keys that aren't really spacebars at all) even Round 5 only has 3 spacebar sizes: 6.25u (good for 90% of users), 7u (good for 10% at a stretch) and 4u (good for Tipros and a few custom keyboard designers like me). There is no SA tooling for the missing 6.0u spacebar, which sucks for those who need it, as DSA has it fine. And keys smaller than 4u wide ain't no spacebars at all. In SA, they're all concave, like Shift keys, only blank!

3&4. Another judgement call. Blanks seem like a good idea, and have their vocal fans, but in actual sales they always lag behind their legended brothers in GBs, so I'm quite skeptical about them in general. But! Your source keyboard has them, which rather invites a second look. I'd consider putting them in the main kit, though, as a bonus maybe alongside the inauthentic function keys. Almost no one would buy an oddball kit just for authenticity, and a bunch of identical keys won't cost much anyway.

[zslane]

The 3D models I use are simple subd cages that are manipulated procedurally (to create the different sizes and orientations on the fly) by my Houdini Keycap OTL, and then subdivided for smoothness prior to rendering. I'm not sure any of this would be terribly useful to anyone who didn't also have--and more importantly, know how to use--Houdini 14.

Question: what uses the 1u R4 SHIFT key?

[Muirium]

The Filco Minila comes to mind:



But it's already screwed with that sweet little spacebar. Speaking of which, there's a wiki page for those:

http://deskthority.net/wiki/Space_by_keyboard

I think Matteo has also designed a few customs with single unit right Shift. It's a "65%" thing. And one of the prime reasons I don't like that size class. Cramming arrow keys onto a 60% involves a lot of compromises.


Re: 3D. Houdini looks interesting. No simple export to Blender then? Yes, I'm much too feeble a 3D dabbler to fork out that asking price!

[zslane]

The Manila also suffers from the need for a 1u R4 DEL key. Is there any point in having a 1u SHIFT without the R4 DEL? I'm inclined to just ditch the 1u SHIFT so I can also avoid the R4 DEL.

As for the R1 |\, that is already present in the ISO kit. If this set is offered as one Deluxe kit, then there'd be no need to duplicate it in a SPECIALTY kit. Even if not, I'm torn over the question of duplicating keycaps in kits.

Re: Houdini -- there is a $199 version for hobbyists called Houdini Indie, I believe. It doesn't share scene file formats with the regular Houdini, but in a case like this the only important thing to be able to share between them is the OTL file format. Even if we got lucky there, your biggest hurdle would be just learning the package. It is necessary to understand not only the fundamentals of the 3D content creation pipeline (modeling, shading, rendering), but also the paradigm of node-based procedural processing (like you would find in professional compositing packages). I take advantage of that paradigm to make new keycap layouts very quickly. Any slowness in seeing new renders from me is entirely due to my poor computer and the degree to which it struggles with the voracious memory and processing appetite of Houdini. In short, I really need a new computer...

[niomosy]

A few blanks might be helpful. Not sure how much need I'd have for 12 as I'd definitely go with the double shot keys for the function row. Might come in handy in the future so if they were included in the base set, that could work though that would likely depend on price.

Can't really comment on the ISO stuff as I'm an ANSI user.

Funny thing about Houdini. Side Effect Software came into the special effects place I was working back in... 1998 or so when everything was still SGIs running Irix (which I kinda miss, only thing left of my Indy is the SGI granite keyboard). I still have the shirt they gave me.

[zslane]

I've added an "ALT GR" key to the ISO kit:

SA Dasher ISO Kit (with "ALT GR" keycap)

dasher_iso_kit_02a.jpg (126.58 KiB) Viewed 5316 times

[kbdfr]

I've added an "ALT GR" key to the ISO kit […]

[keysmasher]

Interested!

[zslane]

For Muirium, who wondered what the SA Dasher set might look like on a white keyboard:

SA Dasher on white keyboard

dasher_keyboard_ansi_04.jpg (233.21 KiB) Viewed 5274 times

[keysmasher]

How about a Rudolph option where the legends are translucent. Then put it on a backlight red board.

[Muirium]

Goddamn Christmas starting in Halloween! Despite what the shops might want you to think, the festive season doesn't start until you're eating chocolates off an advent calendar.

And besides, none of my keyboards have backlights. Ho ho bloody ho.

[zslane]

I thought it might be nice to put the keyboard on a more organic surface:

dasher_keyboard_ansi_05a.jpg (421.94 KiB) Viewed 5187 times

dasher_keyboard_ansi_06a.jpg (293.27 KiB) Viewed 5187 times

[niomosy]

Definitely killing it with those renders.

[romevi]

I thought it might be nice to put the keyboard on a more organic surface:

dasher_keyboard_ansi_05a.jpg

dasher_keyboard_ansi_06a.jpg

Nice Mega Man/Rockman board.

[zslane]

Now that the R4 SHIFT key molds are done over at SP, we can all bask in celebration that SA Dasher and SA Dancer will have them (with corrected legends to boot).

[niomosy]

Yup, saw the news from Oobly. That's great for all the SA sets that are coming up.

[7bit]

... Side Effect Software came into the special effects place I was working back in... 1998 or so when everything was still SGIs running Irix (which I kinda miss, only thing left of my Indy is the SGI granite keyboard). I still have the shirt they gave me.

I have an R5000 (does not really work), the camera (which I alweays used to close so nobody can watch me with my finger in my nose), the keyboard, and the mouse.


Only things missing would be your shirt, a monitor and the suitcase.

[lolpes]

Any idea when this will become available? :3

[zslane]

Not until next year some time. It is, after all, still in early development.

Once there is a reasonable degree of consensus on kit composition here, interest check announcements will go out to geekhack, reddit, and so on, directing continuing discussion here. Once we've hashed out the kits into their final form, it'll be time to choose a GB vehicle and get some production quotes from SP.

This isn't a very swift process by nature, and given SP's production backlog, I don't see any of this being manufactured until next spring at the earliest.

[niomosy]

... Side Effect Software came into the special effects place I was working back in... 1998 or so when everything was still SGIs running Irix (which I kinda miss, only thing left of my Indy is the SGI granite keyboard). I still have the shirt they gave me.

I have an R5000 (does not really work), the camera (which I alweays used to close so nobody can watch me with my finger in my nose), the keyboard, and the mouse.


Only things missing would be your shirt, a monitor and the suitcase.

Good stuff. I used to have an R4400 (I think) Indy, an R5000 Indy, and an R... can't recall which processor Challenge L. Both Indys had been powered off for a long time before I got them and the EEPROM got wiped, which includes the primary ethernet's MAC address. I ended up not spending the cash to get that repaired.

Had the mouse and camera for a while but all of that stuff eventually got cleared out via e-waste recycling. The only thing left is the keyboard at this point.

At one point I was tempted to pick up an Octane but then realized I really don't have much use for one; I could easily do anything UNIX related via a VM running Solaris, *BSD, or Linux.

[niomosy]

While we're on the subject of kits, what's the thoughts on novelties? The old Dasher terminals certainly has some unique keys that might be of interest. Looking at the Workshop thread, the Fun and Rub Out caps could provide some entertainment at a minimum

http://deskthority.net/resources/image/22376

[zslane]

One of the things I stated fairly emphatically in the original post, and periodically after that, was that this project will not include any novelties or new legends. I leave that sort of thing to Facetsame's project.