Keyboardio kickstarter launch | Hacker News Reader

Keyboardio kickstarter launch

kickstarter.com

61 pointsseanmadsen14 comments

I've been following along since Jesse's earliest builds and blogposts (HN from 2yrs ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6891893 ) so it's been awesome to see it turn into a real-deal hardware startup (ran into them in Shenzen while they were doing the Highway1 incubator) and for the KS to finally launch. Can't wait to get mine.

The crafts that I spend all my time on are about text, and for me that means that they flow through keyboards. I'm absolutely thrilled to see someone taking on the project of making a fundamental tool like the keyboard so much better; it reminds me of how programming concepts from the '70s and '80s took a very long time to reach the mainstream consensus of working coders.

"We've scoured the globe, testing dozens of different keyswitches from companies including Cherry, Unicomp, Greetech, Kailh, Gateron and Razer before selecting what we believe to be some of the best keyswitches made today: the Matias Quiet Click mechanical keyswitches."

Has anyone here tried both the Cherry switches and the Matias ones? How does it feel to type on them? I currently use Cherry Browns.

In my personal opinion, Cherry Clears are a strictly better version of Cherry Browns on all axes, and the Matias Quiet Click switches are better still. I much prefer them.

They are having Meetups in several cities. I've signed up for one so I can give it a try.

http://www.keyboard.io/roadtrip/

I strongly agree with this. Cherry browns don't have very much tactility to them. Cherry clears add tactility, but IMO the springs are too heavy; the Matias ones sit right in between these two. Matias also has a higher actuation point, which I prefer.

The difference between Matias and Cherry isn't as pronounced with their clicky switches, but for the quiet ones I prefer Matias.

(Disclaimer: I sell keyboard kits for a living and am in the process of transitioning my product away from Cherry to Matias.)

I own Cherry Brown (Das), Blue (CM), and Clear (CODE) keyboards. I've used a Keyboardio Model 01 and it feels superior to all of them.

It's totally up to personal preference. For me any matias is better than any cherry. After buying a topre and matias board, I doubt I'll ever add another cherry to my collection.

Well I was hoping they'd break 50k in the first 30 minutes, but 47k+ isn't bad!

I love that someone is paying more attention to the keyboard space as switching to an Ergodox is the best thing I have ever done, but I don't like this one. I wish them the best of luck, but the lack of full open source ( hardware and sofware ) is really a limiter for me, I can't make changes or improvements I am just stuck with whatever they decided was best.

Err, what? Their open source policy is stated in the video and in the text. Every keyboard ships w/ a screwdriver and the firmware is on github. https://github.com/obra/KeyboardioFirmware

"We believe, quite strongly, that you own the things you buy from us. You are 100% welcome to open your keyboard up, flash its firmware, reflash its bootloader, solder weird connectors onto the circuit boards or flash our firmware onto something else. (Do note that we're not going to be able to help you out a lot after you do some of those things.) To make all of this as easy as possible for you, your Model 01 will ship with a screwdriver, firmware & bootloader source code, schematics, and all the CAD you need to design your own enclosure."

yeah but no mention of the schematics for the circuit boards, or the existing designs of the enclosure. If you look at the ergodox they ship the gerbers for the circuit board as well as STL files for the enclosure.

"schematics, and all the CAD you need to design your own enclosure" does not count as a mention of schematics?

If that's not enough for you, then it's not, but it sounds like you're just arguing to argue. (FWIW I've soldered my own ErgoDox. I've also backed the Model 01.)

Anyway, I'm going to back away from this thread now. Good luck, guy.

The Keyboardio is fully open source, from the schematics to the CAD files to the firmware. It says so several times on the kickstarter page. Heck, the code is available right now: https://github.com/obra/KeyboardioFirmware/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com