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Comment by elric | Hacker News Reader

I imagine we'll be seeing more personalized setups as time progresses. Custom keyboards have been pretty feasible and affordable for a good while now, with things like QMK and even custom PCB designers. It can still be a bit fiddly, so it's mostly keyboard nutters such as myself who go down that rabbit hole.

Custom trackpads/mice/trackballs haven't gained as much traction, they're not quite as simple as keyboards, and maybe fewer people realise they could benefit from one. I think I might like an upright ergonomic mouse that's shaped to my hand, but then I'm so glued to my keyboard that it hardly seems worth the effort.

As a child I always wanted a chair with a split keyboard built into the armrests. Probalby inspired by Palpatine's fancy chair. Maybe I'll make that investment one day ...

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I'm still surprised by the price of some of these split keyboards. I guess it's just small batch size but $400 is steep.

You can buy them on Aliexpress for $100-150 fully assembled or < $50 pcbs for soldering.

I bought they keychron Q11 because it was cheaper and it is way higher quality than I expected. It's a fantastic split keyboard.

That is pretty cheap in the long run.

I get what you mean, but that is assuming that you know exactly which one to get and you only need to buy one. In reality, you'll probably need to try at least 3-4 keyboards to find the right one, and they're not always easy or cost-free to return since they're often only available on specialty sites or kickstarters.

But when I can buy a "good enough" Dell keyboard for $30, over 10x the cost for splitting the PCB in half sure smells like a rip off.

Does it? The "good enough" Dell keyboard is made by a multi-billion dollar corporation in extremely large quantities. Economies of scale bring the price all the way down, and they skimp on parts (e.g. no real mechanical keys).

The cost isn't in "splitting the PCB in half", it's in designing and connecting two halves. In sourcing (usually) high quality mechanical keys. Due to the small batch sizes there's also a good chance these are installed by hand, which is pretty labour intensive. Labour ain't cheap.

I work for a U.S. company that makes ergonomic 3D printed keyboards. We design specifically for the individual user's hand. Almost all the keyboard shells (the 3d files) are designed custom for the individual.

Labor is pretty cheap. It takes on average about 2 hours to build a keyboard. If there are no issues, it takes 1 hour. That costs about $25 total on average for labor.

The main cost is the 3d printed shells. We print PLA ourselves for cheap, but we outsource Nylon and Resin to China. These can cost anywhere from $150 to $200 for the entire thing.

The next highest cost are the PCBs. Our connectors, PCB columns for the switches, trackball PCBs, and the "brain" PCB, where all the logic processing happens, end up costing over $100-$150 total.

The total cost to build them ends up being anywhere from $250 (the absolute minimum barebones keyboard) to $400 for higher end boards.

Just some insight.

Maybe. If a $30 keyboard works for you that's great. They drive me crazy.

My take is that ergonomics are personal. Split keyboards work for me.

If your body is complaining, don't ignore it. Take actions. Split keyboard might be one action that helps.

I remember the chair mount being a post on the keyboard.io community forum. Somebody built that setup with the Model 01.

Looked amazing; IIRC the tricky part was how to wire it back to the computer when the chair was on wheels.

Glove80 is wireless and has a chair mount accessory

How far are we with brain control interfaces though? I've seen some people playing games with off-the-shelf-ish non invasive eeg devices. Although there seemed to be some delay and crudeness to it.

If the signal to noise level is acceptable it has to be doable to improve it until you can type with it right?

> If the signal to noise level is acceptable it has to be doable to improve it until you can type with it right?

Fairly sure the signal to noise level isn't acceptable, unless you are willing to have electrodes permanently implanted in your skull. External BCI is a very basic at the present time.

>> I think I might like an upright ergonomic mouse that's shaped to my hand

I use a Logitech MX Vertical mouse for work, and actually love it for pretty much all non-gaming/pixel-perfect tasks. It feels like it naturally fits my hand in terms of shape and size, which adds up over 40h weeks.

I've tried them, but something about the button placement feels off for the shape of my hand. I recommend them to people quite often, and they're usually well received.

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