Atreus: My Custom Keyboard | Hacker News Reader

Atreus: My Custom Keyboard

blog.mattgauger.com

131 pointsluu24 comments

Designer of the Atreus here. The post linked to the Atreus OSS project, but I am also selling kits for anyone who wants to put one together without tracking down the parts yourself. http://atreus.technomancy.us Happy to answer any questions.

The action of the switches is described as "crisp," but is it light? Ideal for me is something with a very light but not mushy action. If that's the case with these, then... please take my money.

Technically I believe the lightest available switch for this kind of thing is the Cherry MX Red, at 45 cN activation pressure. However, since this is a linear switch rather than a tactile one, it's difficult to tell when the switch has activated, and you typically end up bottoming out while typing.

The MX Blue switches I use have a the same spring, but the tactile bump gives them a slightly higher activation pressure. However, it also gives you tactile feedback about what point at which you can release, so in practice it may end up feeling lighter.

That said, I can put together a kit with Red switches if you like; just put a note in the shipping field. I think the Blues are a better all-around choice (they are still much lighter than the famous IBM Model M's buckling springs) but if you have specific needs I can work with that.

I'm currently working on a one handed keyboard and only recently did I learn how to solder.

As a proof of concept with a teensy, I did a 3x3 and in the end, I did get a "hello world" out!

http://youtu.be/nsoSEf64tbM

I too am using clear switches, and today I was working on the real version with a protoboard. Drilling is not fun.

Cherry MX's website also has some of the sizes in inches while on a mm grid. I wish they were just consistent and used mm, even though I am in the US.

Cool! The case is super nice!

I posted my keyboard project on HN a while back. I decided not to do a case, but to split it like an ErgoDox. http://yager.io/keyboard/keyboard.html I've been considering the possibility of fabricating a case of some kind. Looks like I'll have to add wood to the list.

the case is spiffy. but way too tall. i will probably use it bare. definitely will induce wrist pain if not used on a low keyboard tray (which no one has on any table from this century)

and nice project and documentation of it! thank you a lot for sharing.

Another interesting custom keyboard is Tim Tyler's: http://youtu.be/9yg3s77nAMQ

He has a lot of technical information on his website. He's kind of gone in the opposite direction re: complexity.

I just finished my massdrop ergodox a few weeks ago, and I'm loving it. One of the things I like the most about it is the way the left and right hands are separate, allowing me to keep them about shoulder width apart in a very natural position. That was actually the biggest selling point to me over something like the kinesis or the TECK. The split layout feels like it's really revolutionizing the ergonomics of typing.

I have a Kinesis Freestyle (another split keyboard), and I absolutely agree: being able to keep my hands further apart is wonderful.

There wasn't anything like the ErgoDox available when I purchased my Kinesis, but if I were in the market now, I would definitely consider it--the thumb-area modifiers are something that I would have liked to have had.

I got my ergo dox on the one drop that had an assembly option. It's a really nice keyboard. Someone needs to mass produce these. Best ergo keyboard I've ever tried.

Make a keyboard where you have one key for each finger. You get all characters by pressing combinations of keys. There are 1024 possible combinations.

1023, unless you want it to spew characters when you aren't touching it.

Chording keyboards are mentioned in the first sentence of the post.

As a pianist of several years, I don't tend to think that chording is a very good idea for fast typing. Certain chord combinations are never very graceful and are a good recipe for tendon strain. We learn to avoid certain fingering because of these hand limitations, and part of the reason we can do that easily is because we are generally moving our hands all over the keyboard. The secret to effective piano playing (to limit strain and tiredness and harm) is honestly the complete opposite of what a lot of computer-keyboard-minimalists seem to be striving for - pianists are supposed to minimize finger movement, and send as much of that movement upstream as possible. Transfer finger to hand, hand to wrist, wrist to arm, arm to body - limit individual finger activity as much as possible for relaxed playing. The idea of minimizing computer keyboard keys for having less keys, and putting more responsibility on agile fingers while freezing the hand in one location, seems exactly backward if the goal is for fast, efficient, fluid strain-free typing.

Insightful comment, thanks for giving a perspective from a completely different profession. :)

There is however something i need to point out to you: Chording is not for fast typing. In fact, since you must hit multiple keys either sequentially or together, just to produce a single signal to the computer, it is guaranteed to be slower. However chorded keyboards would make it possible to type in restricted situations, such as people who are hospitalized, missing limbs, working on something where the other hand is occupied or where body motions are limited, on the go, or heck, simply while lying back and relaxing; while still maintaining a useful speed.

With stenography, you do transfer much of the "push" to your forearms (and keeping the wrist reasonably still). You just place your fingers in the right position for the keys you want. It's unlike typing where you use the force of your fingers to actuate the keys.

The primary goal of steno though isn't to provide chords - it's to learn a short-hand language enough to reduce whole words or sentences down to a single stroke of the arm - so you can get down much more information with less movement.

That already exists. The most popular modern variant is plover[1]. However, it might be hard to transition to.

[1] http://plover.stenoknight.com/

Speaking of Plover and chorded keyboards, check out this open source stenotype machine:

http://stenosaurus.com

Chatter on the mailing list makes is sound like it will be coming out in October.

Realistically one would not want to use the combinations requiring many fingers (the variants using nine fingers gives you just ten combinations more).

Using max four fingers per input still gives you 10+10x9/2+10x9x8/6+10x9x8x7/24=385 combinations.

A few days ago I stumbled on Axios, an "Open Source Modular Ergonomic Keyboard". They are preparing a crowd-funding campaign here [0].

[0] https://www.crowdsupply.com/multiplxd/axios-keyboard

As expensive as it is, I've found a Kinesis to be ideal ergonomically, but also to be by no means the end of the story. The design reminds me of a flatter Kinesis keyboard with an angle, due to the split in the middle.

The other part of the story was getting rid of qwerty, and using colemak instead (not Dvorak, which I'm still modestly confused about.) I found that qwerty was modestly uncomfortable to type with due to the dated understanding of how often keys are actually used while typing, which wasn't fixed by the keyboard alone.

The Kinesis Advantage and Ergodox are both fantastic designs, but they are untenable for people like myself who travel a lot and work from coffee shops and parks. (The Kinesis would also be a lot more appealing if you could swap the key switches with a tactile option.) I wrote a bit about how this compares to those designs on my blog a while back: http://technomancy.us/173

It is possible to switch the switches on the Kinesis to Cherry MX blues, but it is a lot of work:

http://t.co/OyjGCdwvGN

That said, it is awesome (and loud).

I thought about making one of these but chose to go with the ErgoDox instead. The entirely split layout of the ErgoDox is really nice. That along with more keys sold it for me. 42 keys just isn't enough in my opinion.

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