Interview with Jesse Vincent, Co-Founder and CTO of Keyboardio | Hacker News Reader

Interview with Jesse Vincent, Co-Founder and CTO of Keyboardio

blog.hwtrek.com

22 pointscharlieegan315 comments

I've actually had the pleasure of using one of the Model 01s. (a version that is, from what I understand, slightly different from what is going to be shipping) During their Kickstarter they actually went on a huge tour to visit something like 30 different hacker spaces in the 30 days of their Kickstarter to meet the people who did, or might want to, back their project. I think the best endorsement of it I can give is this: I was actually sad when I went home and couldn't take it with me. I backed their Kickstarter, and had been paying attention to their blog for a while, so I'm quite looking forward to when mine finally arrives.

What's very surprising to me is that I don't feel like I've seen much of this keyboard mentioned on HN, considering it really is the ultimate hacker's keyboard. (the most discussion I saw was 14 posts on their Kickstarter announcement from a quick search) Everything about it is going to be open source: from the actual specs of the hardware inside (so you could manufacture your own!) to all the code being used to run the keyboard. It's completely modifiable from the top to bottom. I don't know if it will have the capability when it finally ships, as Jesse mentioned it wasn't in their firmware to be able to do so at the meetup, but one of the ideas that excites me is the ability to change the state of the colored keys. Someone at the meetup I went to brought up the idea of changing the color of all the keys to a bright red when plugged into a production computer and were using a root terminal. It was mentioned that they were interested in adding that capability, but who knows, if they don't, someone else might put in a pull request for it.

Most of the discussions here were about earlier prototypes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4893457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4895746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6891893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9719773

Guess I missed those in my search. I just did a search for "keyboardio" and looked at the first page or so, my apologies for not being more thorough.

I tried one, really like it. But I feel they got the design wrong. They tried to make it look pretty, with the butterfly pattern, but I feel it looks a bit ugly.

Still, I'm getting one. But I would have preferred a more simple and industrial design.

With no irony or smart-aleckyness or whatever: You should make your own enclosure! I imagine there are people who feel similarly, so you can "contribute" to the project by doing so an releasing schematics so others who want a more industrial design as well can do the same.

Jesse from Keyboardio here - We'll be releasing enclosure CAD so you can build your own enclosure that feels different or better fits your own aesthetics. (Once we're shipped, we'll also probably play around with some alternate enclosure options commercially.)

But I agree with the earlier commenter that the design isn't for everyone. We made a very conscious choice to go for something on the more organic and designy end of the spectrum as a counterpoint to most other ergonomic keyboards.

I think an alternate enclosure that is a bit more industrial would sell very well.

Still awesome piece of work.

Thanks!

Out of curiosity, what would be your ideal?

I use the workman layout, so I'll obviously want to move the keys around to match the layout. some keyboards keys break when trying to shuffle them around. does anyone know if it's easy to move the keys around?

still gonna buy one anyway, and if I can't I'll just put stickers on top like my mpb :)

Jesse from Keyboardio here - you can't move the physical keycaps, but we'll have a blank version of the legends available as an option. We're still hopeful that we'll be able to offer custom legends at a reasonable price down the road.

no biggie, I'll just ask for the dot labels. thanks!

As Jesse mentioned, you can't do this. The reason is because each key is formed differently. For example, look at the N key here: https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/003/972/304/567c71457a35a77... .

See how the bottom edge is not flat, but diagonal? You couldn't move that key anywhere else. There might be some keys you can move (for example, Y and U look the same size), but arbitrary swapping isn't going to work.

yeah I totally didn't notice. I'm gonna just order the dot labels and put stickers on top. that's really cool the keys are custom like that.

Seems down at the moment. Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oivr__r...

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