DIY 35% Keyboard

[wscarlton]

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!)

[seebart]

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?

[wscarlton]

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.

[Madhias]

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

[HzFaq]

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 .

[Mal-2]

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.

[The_Boom_Boy]

Where did you get those key caps? Thanks

[Wodan]

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

[lot_lizard]

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