Designed in Ergogen and KiCAD. Basically remade the Zilpzalp using the rufous Ergogen config then cut down the thumbs. Build the rest with jcmkk3’s great footprints and using the hummingbird matrix. Made firmware for ZMK but should also just work with standard hummingbird firmware. Lot’s of love to apfel, weteor, and PJE66 as well.
Soldered them all, and now designed my most recent one myself.
Nocturnals were actually my first choc I knew they were coming and waited. That being said they are great, very quiet, satisfying to type on and have better tolerances than standard chocs leading to less stem wobble. Out of choc and MX ambients are genuinely one of my favourite if not favourite switch. Definitely recommend, especially if you need the silence. I work from home so that’s not an issue for me but still a nice bonus.
If you like the weight and feel of sunsets, the sunrise switches are coming soon which will be silent tactiles and is aiming for the same feel.
I think it was too small for them hahah. But they liked the split and programmability. I think they are looking at buying a voyager.
I may or may not like ever smaller unibody keyboards. Grumpy is next then hopefully a 26 key.
It looks like vaporware to me tbh
Hahah. Layers and combos. You can see a few people’s layouts on 30 key boards at the keymap db website. What’s even better is I actually don’t even use all the keys lol. https://keymapdb.com/
80wpm usually but I’ve hit 100 when I am being a try-hard hahaha. Swapped to aptmak a few days ago so I am back to 40-50 wpm now while I get used to the new layout.
Hahaha sometimes hackintosh but mostly Linux and windows at work.
Yep. Xiao BLE usb c but I used magnet connectors on all my boards
Middle and pointer fingers for sure. Used thumb trackballs for 17 years and now my thumb is starting to hurt. More accurate as well I find
Less keys = better right?
End game lol. Fun build, working great so far! ZMK is really nice
As if Ergomechkeyboards needs more Cheapino’s. I had my spare parts laying around and built this for a friend. Thought I’d share a quick photo. Still love this project
Happy to answer as someone on the low key count side, simply put the benefit for me is comfort. Having a two key inner column reduces that awkward reach which is a pretty big improvement. I personally have pinkie pain so reducing pinkie keys completely down to just one key each lowers load and any reaches.
As noted you get rid of having dedicated keys as a side effect. By design those keys are low frequency or fit well with combos. Q and Z for example are super uncommon.
V is an almost a special case that works really well as a combo. V almost exclusively interacts with vowels, especially “e” and “i”. So with optimized layouts, it gets pushed to one of the worse positions on the consonant side. Usually top pinky or top inner.
The combo position is easier to reach and use over the pinkie or inner index. It is predictably preceded and followed by a vowel (or space), it is easy to keep a typing flow with the combo. (This V explanation is stolen and reworded from jcmkk3)
I’d say the same for / and quotes ring and middle move together and those combos are very comfortable compared to using your pinkies or at least my pinkies.