deskthority

Okay, this is my first post and I am pretty new to mechanical keyboards, but after using one a work for a few months I knew that I wanted to design and build one myself.

Taking inspiration from the Planck (40% grid keyboard), I wanted to make a small keyboard that was also staggered. With only 37 keys, this is about as small as I could conceive without losing too much functionality.

Here is album that I originally posted to /r/mechanicalkeyboards.

Final product:


Looking through the front


Looking through the back


Picture for scale


My biggest complaint about this board is that only three fingers of my right hand rest on keys when I am at the home position and also that I don't have a right shift at the moment. I may be able to use a command in the firmware that treats the "Enter" key as a shift key if held down instead of just tapped.

Here is the current layout.


Here is what I think would be an improved, slightly larger layout.


What do you think? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

(If I haven't followed the correct/ best format in posting this, let me know so I can fix it!)

Welcome to DT. I I'm not really into small keyboard's but your project is impressive. My HHKB 2 is smallest I'll go. How long have you worked on this?

seebart wrote: ↑How long have you worked on this?

Thanks, I'm sure I spent at least four hours putting everything together (two different days). Since this was the first keyboard I built, I'm sure it took longer than if I were to build another.

Welcome to DT! I'd like to build such small keyboard sometimes but with Bluetooth...

Great first post, welcome.

I'm with seebart I think, 60% is about as small as I'm willing to go; after that it seems like you spend longer holding down FN keys than actually typing .

The 2nd layout certainly seems a little more practical, presumably you've seen/used hasus TMK firmware to get dual use mods?

I'm still kind of amazed that people are willing to chuck numbers, symbols and punctuation onto a function layer but will fight to the death for dedicated arrow keys...Anyway, that's the great thing about customs, they're custom .

HzFaq wrote: ↑I'm still kind of amazed that people are willing to chuck numbers, symbols and punctuation onto a function layer but will fight to the death for dedicated arrow keys...Anyway, that's the great thing about customs, they're custom .

I won't. Anything smaller than 75% is too small for me. My whole concern is how close I can bring the mouse to my normal right hand position. A few columns of keys on the left won't bother me a lick (even for those times I do move the mouse out there). I think my Cherry G86-63401, at 18U, is 4U wider than what I'd like, but if I hadn't grabbed the version with a trackpad (I don't use), I could shift everything over to the far right because it's a matrix board. If this means shoving some less-used functions (of my choice, preferably) onto an Fn layer, that's fine. I'd start with NumLock, ScrollLock, CapsLock, and Pause. (PrintScreen is just useful enough to retain as is.) I also don't mind if Insert is in the Fn layer, I consider it more of a liability than an asset most of the time.

A matrix layout also makes it somewhat easier to overlay layers, since most of the keys one would wish to push out to a Fn/Pn layer are matrixed in nature. A matrix also slightly narrows the keyboard without dropping keys, and it becomes more natural to the hands when the typing area is dead in front of me — which is what a 75% is all about in the first place.

I don't mind lots of useful keys. I do mind my mouse being pushed out so far it makes my arm hurt.

Where did you get those key caps? Thanks

What the hell ... are you planning on keistering that thing?

HzFaq wrote: ↑Anyway, that's the great thing about customs, they're custom .

Truer words are seldom spoken

I like playing with alternative layouts... even used DataHands for a dedicated month, but I find my productivity drops when the colons and quotes aren't on the home row because of what I do. It is the reason my experiments with Dvorak, Colemak, <insert alternative layout here>, have always failed and I migrated back to Qwerty. If I were to use your proposed layout, I would map your Tab to Control, Control to Function, Del/Esc would be Tab, and semi-colon/colon would need to live on Enter as function keys. The quotes would get moved too... but that would take some experiments.

Having said that, I love the APPEARANCE of the proposed key layout, and it would be a fun little travel board as a bluetooth tablet alternative. It just wouldn't work for me in it's current form as any sort of a real driver since I am symbol heavy typist.

Great project, well executed, and welcome