About three months ago I blogged about my first keyboard PCB design, a diode-free PCB for an existing 36-key ergonomic case. Since this summary of my journey into keyboard madness, I learnt how to write my own ZMK keyboard firmware, as a precursor to designing a version with Bluetooth. This time I also had to learn some basic CAD to modify the keyboard case. And here it is, the Gamma Omega "Hesse", a Bluetooth diode-free 36-key ergonomic keyboard.
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| Front & back of the "Hesse" keyboard PCB |
My first baby steps with FreeCAD for editing step files, the comparatively easy challenge of removing some block-like shapes in a 3D-printed keyboard case. The motivation here is making room for a battery & reset button for a Bluetooth variant of what was a USB wired-only keyboard. Getting started with FreeCAD is hard!
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| Before - note the bracing beams |
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| After - now with lots of open space |
Naginata Style (薙刀式), by author Toshihiko Ōoka (大岡俊彦), is a Japanese kana-based keyboard layout which caught my interest. It was developed to work on traditional keyboards with spacebar used as central shift, but also works well on small ergonomic keyboards with thumbs-keys. The most common kana are a single key press, but generalising the idea of shift keys any other kana requiries a two-key combo (including compounds like "きゃ" or "kya"), or at most a three key combo (compounds like "ぎゃ" or "gya" with a ten-ten modifier). The layout is more ergonomic than Qwerty and the rarely used JIS Kana layout, and needs less key presses than romaji.
This week I finished my first self-built computer keyboard, the Gamma Omega TC36K. I've just used it to type up this brief summary of my descent down the "Rabbit Hole" into madness the world of custom keyboards to reach this milestone.
My previous blog posts talked about diode-free keyboard designs using topology, and specifically using a partial Tutte-Coxeter graph for keyboards with 30~42 keys. As hinted at, I spent June making my own no-diode topology-based 36-key ergonomic keyboard PCB design using the Open Source tools Ergogen and KiCad. This is designed as an alternative PCB to fit the existing Gamma Omega keyboard's 3D printed case design (case design or modification can be a future project).
