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Ehh I have a kinesis advantage. There are some things I don't like about it, but I doubt it would be practical for me to make my own keyboard with a bowl shap

Ehh I have a kinesis advantage. There are some things I don't like about it, but I doubt it would be practical for me to make my own keyboard with a bowl shape like kinesis or maltron keyboards. And even if I could figure it out, they've probably done research into exactly what kind of curvature works well for the average hand, so whatever I made would be marginally less ergonomic.

weinzierl 7y ago
First of all, if you are happy with the curvature of the Kinesis, the rest of it is pretty hackable. There are various projects around it, one of the more well known is a custom controller and custom software from Michael Stapelberg (of i3 window manager fame)[1]. He gave a Google Tech Talk about the project about a year ago[2]. Now, if you are not happy with the curvature things get more complicated and I'm not aware of any projects that did a custom housing. That being said I think it is not unrealistic. The biggest problem is to create a curved cover with holes for the key switches. All the switches are mounted on flexible PCBs which should adapt to your new case as long as the curvature is not too crazy. So basically all you need to customize is the top part of the housing, the rest can stay the same. [1] https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2013-03-21-kinesis_custom_controller/ https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2013-03-21-kinesis_custo... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bX6iqqR3XY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bX6iqqR3XY
Symbiote 7y ago
There are 11 bowl-type DIY keyboards shown [1]. They're usually 3D printed and handwired. Some of them are adjustable to vary the offset of each row and the depth etc. [1] http://xahlee.info/kbd/diy_keyboards_index.html http://xahlee.info/kbd/diy_keyboards_index.html