All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!
Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.
He's still in high school. This is genuinely incredible stuff.
When I was in high school my crowning achievement was making a flash animation with some rudimentary AS2 scripts.
This... I mean, Christ, how many adults could do this? This genuinely top tier stuff.
He made the keyboard removable, usable wirelessly and fully mechanical. How does one possess these skills?
And the budget isn't insane either.
During dev he blew through 5 grand (high for an individual, but nothing compared to some startups)
For production, apparently building one of these yourself with the materials he's provided would cost $1500 -- again, really not that astronomical
This is really shining a lens on some companies charging $2000 for mid-tier laptop with half these features.
I'm... quite excited that we're entering a new era of hardware, which would put an end to these needless hardware companies
1500$ because you don't have bulk parts, otherwise it could go down by a significant amount.
However, the 5k doesn't include all the hours of engineering, which costs a lot more than the hardware.
With that said, you are absolutely right that we get dog shit computers for the price. The amount of hours I've spent in my life reducing the cost for a board is insane. And bear in mind that this wasn't for high volume production neither where hardware cost reductions have a big impact.
I hope that this guy go on to do his own thing and doesn't get gobbled by the corporate machine (or become the corporate machine).
There are a lot of open source mechanical keyboards out there and with a bit of elbow grease, anyone that is a little bit tech savvy can figure out how to link all the information together and do something with that.
However, the thing that stands out to me is the integration of all the parts.
Integration between hardware and firmware is a bitch, and add to that the mechanical integration as well. This dude hopefully has a bright future ahed of him, because he certainly has the chops.
I think the difference here is that you can access so many parts through online shopping but also access a lot of knowledge.
Its more possible for a nerd to puzzle the things together. Im not saying its easy, but compared to back in the days, your Motivation would be low to even attempt such interesting routes, because back then everything was more expensive and hard to find.