The idea:
create a portable gaming/typing hybrid board on a budget.

I have set out to to achieve this by using various cherry mx switches on one board in order to try and take the best of both worlds, all the cherry switches will have matching mx coloured coloured rit dye PBT keycaps
i.e
MX Red - Red keycap
Mx Blue - Blue keycap
etc etc

The Doner/original board: Noppoo Choc Mini MX Blue

here is the layout



and the reasoning

Cherry Mx blue: most of the board will consist of these tactile and clicky switches, they are my favourite cherry switch and are widely considered optimal for typing with. These will make up most of the alphabetical keys

Cherry Mx black: I love gaming on these switches and find them very nice to use (especially for spamming keys), although im not as big a fan of typing on them, as they have no tactile feed back and are quite heavy.
These will be used for WASD UP,DOWN,LEFT,RIGHT and the number keys

Cherry Mx Brown: a light tacticle switch which closely resembles blues except lightly and with no click, these are a good hybrid switch, therefore i have decided to place them around the WASD cluster and also use them for backspace, tab etc.

Cherry Mx red: similar to black but lighter, i have decided to place them on all the main modifier keys, partly for a bit of change and partly because these keys tend to be spammed alot whilst gaming so i thought it best if they were lighter for sprinting and crouching etc.

Cherry MX ergo clears: like browns but with a bigger tactile bump and a little heavier actuation; these will be used for the function keys top right so as to confirm pressing (and so as the keycaps work with the LEDs) and they will also be used for enter and caps lock so as toprovide confirmation of activating the switch and again because of LEDs

Cherry MX greys: Very stiff switch with a high activation force, i have placed these on Windows, Fn and Esc to avoid accidental presses and well cause i can haha.

Board before any mods:


after all switches being desoldered and
Mx Browns
Mx ergo clears
and MX greys being soldered on


Picture of PCB


My soldering (I know its not great, its been a while)


more to come when MX blacks arrive.
ALSO I AM STILL LOOKING FOR MX REDS x 6 would rather not order off an official site.

what you reckon thus far?

Will be interesting to see how it goes.
A novel idea, but I can't imagine typing would be nice on it, the different switches would play havoc surely?

Edit:
Some of the switches, like caps lock as slightly heavier, winkey etc are cool, but the main typing area I imagine wouldn't be good to type on, although gaming would probably be good.

GeorgeStorm wrote:Will be interesting to see how it goes.
A novel idea, but I can't imagine typing would be nice on it, the different switches would play havoc surely?

Its going to be interesting, i had a quick go with the browns n blues on, i found it okay tbh. They are both tactile so it sorta works, will be interesting to see how the mx blacks factor in.

Even if it doesnt work well for typing, its been a fun project and will certainly work as a gaming board.

I would do it the other way round:
Gaming keys like WASD and cursor keys with red springs and the rest with blacks.

Also, I expected the keyboard colored in red/white similar to this:

I don't think the TO knows there is a region in Germany actually called Franken

7bit wrote:I would do it the other way round:
Gaming keys like WASD and cursor keys with red springs and the rest with blacks.

which one in which switches exactly? why do you reckon that would be better?

DeathAdder wrote:I don't think the TO knows there is a region in Germany actually called Franken

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franconia

i see what you did there 7bit haha!

RougeRambo wrote:which one in which switches exactly? why do you reckon that would be better?

The lighter switch (red) on those keys you use most in hour-long gaming and the rest in black so the chance of unintentiously pressing them is a bit lower.

7bit wrote:

RougeRambo wrote:which one in which switches exactly? why do you reckon that would be better?

The lighter switch (red) on those keys you use most in hour-long gaming and the rest in black so the chance of unintentiously pressing them is a bit lower.

that makes a lot of sense actually, thanks.

i reckon WASD in red and others black could be a plan....
right WHO HAS SOME CHERRY REDS!

update, all the soldering is done.
here is the finished soldered project, i just need to add some colour coded PBT caps now, do the rit dying for them etc, i may also get some clear caps for the neccessary LED keys and some LEDs, i will also Think about adding a braided detachable cable




opinions?

also im finding it actually works okay as a typing board and VERY well as a gaming board

I think for gaming this would be fine, but I think once you switch to typing on the board the non-uniform switch feel is going to bother you. At least it would bother me, I don't know about you. Keep it to gaming and I think that it would work just fine.

Instead of finding true reds, just make Ghetto Reds with a couple spare blacks and the springs from spare Browns/Blues... with the caps on you'll never know the difference (TRUST ME, I've got both and they're identical)

Aaaand I now see you have them listed AS Ghetto Reds on your layout. My bad.

yeah typing aint bad, but the WASD keys feel slightly weird. when typing