Keyboardio is a Hackable 'Artisanal Keyboard' That's Already Kickstarted (Video)

I bumped into Jesse Vincent and his keyboard project called Keyboardio at last year's Solid conference. Then, it was a developing project with a lot of literally rough edges, but since I'm a bit of a keyboard enthusiast, it grabbed my attention. In the time since, his plan to bring a truly hackable keyboard to the world has gained momentum, and the dozens of layouts and material combinations that he and partner in design Kaia Dekker have considered have been boiled down into one nearly-ready final version. The result is a compact split keyboard housed in an "heirloom quality" wooden case. It has some features you might consider overwrought -- like an RGB LED beneath each key, a precision mouse feature via WASD keys, and the ability, theoretically, to put more than a dozen feet between each half of the board. But if you're designing a keyboard from scratch, why not?

Vincent and Dekker put their project onto Kickstarter, then spent weeks on a road trip showing it at hacker and maker spaces around the U.S.; the project updates make a nice travelogue about just how widespread and varied is the world of DIY culture. I caught up with him in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on the road between some of those demo gigs, to talk about the long path from idea to (hopefully) shipping a product to backers. By the time we had this conversation, the project was well past fully funded, andI was impressed enough to order one myself; hopefully, the clicky keys will be worth the cost of a middlin' Chromebook, though Vincent admits they're not going to fool anyone looking for a buckling spring action. On the other hand, at least at the Kickstarter price, it beats some of the Maltron keyboards I've been eyeing for years. Plus, it comes with a screwdriver.

Comments

Flash ...

[John Bokma]

Flash requirement on a "tech" website... Le Sigh

Hackable!

[pushing-robot]

I see they're trying to encourage DIY by leaving the space bar as an exercise for the buyer.

Wooden?

[penguinoid]

I'm always suspicious of things that are made of wood and advertized as though that were epic quality in materials. I always suspect they're sacrificing quality and price for hipsterism. So, why wood?

Ugh, another pointless video

[wonkey_monkey]

4 minutes of video and (as far as I can tell from skimming through it) not a single picture of the device in question? Just two talking heads with awful sound quality?

We went from text-only summaries to text-with-video. Has it honestly never occured to anyone at Slashdot that images would, in some cases, be a much more preferable option? The old adage is an old adage for a reason.

and the ability, theoretically, to put more than a dozen feet between each half of the board. But if you're designing a keyboard from scratch, why not?

Because it's freakin' pointless, really. Anyway, why only a dozen? Why not 100m?

No tab, have to wait for Dvorak

[cfalcon]

They will at least support custom layouts, but not at launch. So I'll look into it then.

But I will say this- the idea of holding a function key to get to the rest of the keyboard buttons is a terrible one. Chording has some purpose, but here it really seems bad. Do you want Alt + Tab to become Alt + Function + tilde?

Nice design. If they add more keys to it natively later it might be worth looking into. Honestly, I'd love a keyboard that has good quality and doesn't enforce that ludicrous Qwerty stuff. Sure, sure, touch typing, but it would be great to have the keys do what they say instead of being all lies (unless you use a really old or featureless keyboard).

Re:No tab, have to wait for Dvorak

[mattventura]

But I will say this- the idea of holding a function key to get to the rest of the keyboard buttons is a terrible one. Chording has some purpose, but here it really seems bad. Do you want Alt + Tab to become Alt + Function + tilde?

It depends entirely on what keys we're talking about. Yes, I would much rather hit Ctrl-U/D than PgUp/PgDn, Ctrl-A instead of Home, and plenty of others, because anything outside the alphanumeric can easily end up taking more movement to hit than hitting two keys in the alphanumeric area.

But the real issue I see with the keyboard is that the layout is so nonstandard that finding any third party keycaps will be a total PITA if not impossible, and very few keyboards actually come with good quality caps that won't wear down/shine. It looks like this thing is more expensive than an ErgoDox with very little advantage over it.

Re:Still not as good as my kinesis.

[ezakimak]

To elaborate:
Just looking at the layout I can already tell they haven't done a deep enough analysis. Comparing to my kinesis (which I'm typing on right now), in order to press enter requires radial flexion--so while it will still help, the kinesis requires virtually no radial flexion at all, and at most some ulnar deviation (and only to hit shift, one of the lesser-used, and not for any other key). 101-qwerty keyboards don't generally require any radial flexion at all, but incur a lot of ulnar deviation--so this much change in habit may feel better at first but may also just move symptoms around after a while for anyone with an existing injury.

Furthermore, by default they require a modifier for F keys, thus to do a normal modifier+F-key combination is now a 3-key chord-- Ctrl-F5 is now Fn-Ctrl-F5, with both modifiers on the thumb--so now it takes either both hands or an awkward thumb motion pressing it down flat to hit both keys. This would make emacs an impossibility. Compare that to a kinesis with dvorak layout. Ctrl-X and Alt-X are nearly a pinching motion between the thumb and first finger--about the most natural motion our hands ever do, and perfectly comfortable to do all day long.

I cannot make a judgement on the effectiveness of the depth of their keys, but it looks much shallower and likely to require curling the fingers more than the Kinesis does. My guess is the extra curl may become tiresome. The kinesis is "just right"--fingers completely relaxed just fall right on top of the home row, and the majority of keys are merely a single key away from home row. In addition, the keyboardio loses the bottom row, which makes it even less efficient for placement possibilities--requiring more keys to be only accessible via an additional modifier combination.

Their thumb keys arguably align a little better with keeping the hand and wrist in a neutral position, but they wholesale miss the great opportunity of using a second row of thumb keys--it is one of the most agile digits we have. Kinesis gets this right by putting backspace, delete, enter, and space, four of the most used items as the main keys for thumb access, plus an additional row for modifier and navigation keys--put those thumbs to good use. (Compared to a 101-qwerty that relegates both thumbs to share the singular duty of one key... the space bar--WTF--why is it a full on giant key--as if our thumbs are so poorly coordinated they have trouble aiming?)

I would definitely prefer one of these over a qwerty, but will continue to vote for kinesis until something even better comes along.

For people that aren't so picky, or like the bling-bling flashy lights, or need the loud clicks to feel good about typing I say go for it and tell us how you like it.