9 ms·

A complete guide to building a hand-wired keyboard (2020)

98 points by bfm 3y ago

sleepybrett 3y ago
If you want to understand how keyboards function go ahead and do this, but unless you want a really wild layout this is just makework. There are cheap, reliable and flexible pcbs for just about every layout you could want available on the open market from sites like kbdfans and aliexpress not to mention dozens of local mom and pop sites that service the mechanical keyboard industry. It's a pretty big hobby these days.
genpfault 3y ago
Any good, mostly-automatic tooling to go from a Keyboard Layout Editor (KLE)[1] JSON to a laid-out (not necessarily routed) PCB design in something like KiCad? [1]: http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/ http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/
winrid 3y ago
What I really want is a mechanical backlit keyboard without terrible PWM flicker. It's so hard on the eyes. Just regular DC dimming would be ideal.
- thorncorona 3y ago
  Much easier to just up the PWM frequency
  - winrid 3y ago
    Maybe. Are there any with very high PWM frequency? It's not well analyzed right now like screens are.
  - winrid 3y ago
    My 2018 X1 carbon's laptop backlight, which is adjustable, does not have flicker when recorded in slow-mo, so honestly don't see the excuse really.
bmitc 3y ago
Is there a general source of the, seemingly modern day, fascination with keyboards? I buy the Logitech ergonomic mice and keyboards and call it a day, because they save my wrists but aren't crazy, are easy to buy off the shelf, and integrate well together. For example, I use two different mice and a keyboard across two computers with a single USB receiver with just a simple KVM built-in to my monitor. In my personal experience with computers, the keyboard is the least limiting factor with regards to my interaction.
- Karrot_Kream 3y ago
  It's a mix of three different cultural factors long extant in the programming community which came together to create today's keyboard culture: 1. Keyboard elitism Until as late as the early 2000s, there was a lot of elitism in programming circles about how using the mouse was something only "lusers" did. Keyboarding was supposedly faster than mousing (even though programmers do a lot more thinking than either keyboarding or mousing) and was the mark of an expert user. These communities would often shill certain keyboards, like the IBM Model M, or the Happy Hacking Keyboard (HHKB) because of their resilience and the feedback one felt from clacking the keys. 2. Customizing/Hacking Not much has to be said here. Hackers have been customizing their setups for as long as setups could be customized. The ability to program custom keyboard layouts and make custom keyboard firmware is as iconic hacking as it gets. 3. Setup as identity culture From the late 2000s, Unix Porn and a lot of other "setup porn" stuff became very popular. People would make cool setups that they really identified with and so setting up your keyboard to express your personal identity became a bit of a hacker rite of passage. While keyboard culture may have started with these ingredients, it's definitely its own thing these days. I'm not in it myself but I like watching it from the sidelines and it's really cool to see what people come up with. Cool layouts, custom firmware, colored keys, experimenting with different layouts. It's just like trying to get the perfect emacs config: more bikeshedding than productivity hack, but I mean it's a hobby, and a fun enriching one at that. As you say the more practical thing is to just buy an ergo keyboard that works with your wrists/shoulders/neck and call it a day. I have a Model M from when I was an impressionable teen who thought owning a Model M and not using the mouse was the be-all-end-all of being a power computer user, but I mostly use a Kinesis Ergo for my day-to-day computing needs. I'm at a (hybrid) startup these days and we don't really have a dedicated office to store stuff in so I bring an HHKB in to the office because of its portability. I use trackballs for my mousing. That's about it. Holding my arms, wrists, and back in ergo positions is much more important to me than any keyboard really. Though really rock climbing has been the single thing that helped my wrists beat RSI where nothing else really could.
bArray 3y ago
Rather than use the knife to cut sections out of the wire, I would have considered getting some single core wire and sliding pre-cut heat shrink down it - that way you don't risk cutting into the wire. Just remember to let the core cool between heating/soldering to prevent premature shrinking.
qwerty456127 3y ago
Sounds very interesting. I have looked through premium and "custom" keyboards market recently and found out their customness mostly is about look&feel, key placement and omitting "unnecessary" keys while I want a positively custom set of keys: as many keys as possible - full keypad, multimedia keys separate from f1-12 keys, Windows context menu key, also programmable macro keys if possible, no spatial "optimizations" (when manufacturers try to fit all the keys into as little area as possible) etc. I concluded I will probably have to really build my own. My ideal keyboard would even have a ThinkPad-style trackpoint so I could operate the mouse pointer comfortably without removing my hands from the home row :-)
- rgoulter 3y ago
  > omitting "unnecessary" keys .... without removing my hands from the home row The "keep hands on home row" is the motivation behind omitting the "unnecessary" keys, at least for the keyboards which use a small spacebar and give the thumbs more keys to use. With those small 36-key keyboards, your hands pretty much have nowhere to go except to remain on home row. > as many keys as possible I once saw someone made a keyboard with 450 keys. https://relivesight.com/projects/433/ https://relivesight.com/projects/433/
  - Mizoguchi 3y ago
    These small keyboards are usually ortholinear which also helps reducing hand movement. I switched to a OLKB Preonic over a year ago and haven't looked back. After you get used to the smaller factor and non staggered keys format you realize how ridiculously and unnecessarily huge and clunky traditional keyboards are, even laptop keyboards. It's like traveling with a 65 liters bag for years before you learn you can just carry a 40L and travel with less crap and much lighter. It took me a couple of months to come up with the layout that worked for me (and even today I still optimizing it), but once I figured it out the typing experience became just such much better. The QMK configuration tool makes the process of configuring the layout painless and super quick, so you just need the patience to try and iterate.
    - 3y ago
onetimeuse92304 3y ago
As an amateur EE, here my thoughts. If you can do CAD you can probably also design a PCB with a socket for some kind of general purpose MCU or even one of ready-made keyboard controllers. Through-hole soldering is IMO actually simpler than making these "spiders" (that's how in my country we call circuits with self-supported wire to wire joints, usually with at least some components hanging in air by their leads). "Spiders" are prone to breaking with any repeatable mechanical strain. In case of this keyboard, what I am seeing is the plastic board will flex and will put repeatable strain on the wires, possibly leading to malfunction at some point. PCB would be much more reliable (if done correctly) as it would take most or all of the load from the joints. A thicker PCB board would actually be more stiff than the plastic board you have here. Not only materials of PCBs tend to be very tough, the PCB, being below the level of the switches, would need much less cutouts that are weakening your plastic mounting board. Stiffness of the board the switches are mounted to is important not just for the reliability, but also for the overall feel of the mechanical keyboard. This "feel" is mainly affected by the switches, the stiffness of the board, and the acoustics of the enclosure. And lastly, as an amateur EE I find "spiders" appealing (if done nicely, artfully). But if you want to showoff for the larger audience that just "don't get it", a custom PCB would immediately score more points.
- munificent 3y ago
  In English, I think it's "point-to-point": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-to-point_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-to-point_construction
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  As an non-amateur EE, i fully agree with this. If you can draw a basic circuit for 9 keys on paper, you can draw a full-keyboard one in many of the easy cheap PCB platforms, most of which offer a web interface (no installation of any weird software), rendered 3d views and a very cheap production price. If you really want to do it without a chinese PCB manufacturer, you can do it on a perf board ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfboard ). If you have more GPIOs than keys (eg when building a very cheap steam deck with 9/12 keys), you don't even need any kind of "matrix" multiplexing, and you can just connect the keys to individual gpio pins. If you take a better microcontroller than a teensy, you also get bluetooth (and wifi) capabilities, like with eg. esp32 (~$5 on aliexpress). But either way, doing fun electronics, be it on a pcb or when soldering "in the air" is a lot better waste of money and time than many other things most people do.
hellweaver666 3y ago
Building your own keyboards is super satisfying. I started off hand-wiring a couple of macropads and then built a 60% handwire and a split ergo. Finally with all the knowledge I learnt I designed a PCB for a macropad and then just scaled up to my own keyboard which is a 50% ortholinear keyboard which has three extra "macro" switches on the side. I found a switch footprint that allows it to take "normal" or "low profile" style switches so I have a version for home and a super slim version for taking to the office. I think the only thing I would do differently now is to dump QMK and use KMK instead as it's Circuit Python based which means that the firmware can be created and edited directly with your favourite IDE (QMK requires installing all sorts of extra software and compiling etc). If the Microcontroller ever dies on this board I will definitely swap it out for a CircuitPython compatible alternative!
- barrenko 3y ago
  Could you please post a picture as well? (this goes out to other enthusiasts in this post)
beeforpork 3y ago
Soldering 1N4148 so close to the glass body, plus using a thick drop of solder, makes it really easy to overheat the diode. They are everywhere because they are cheap, not because they are robust... The diodes may become unconditionally conductive, so it may not be an obvious bug. I fried many of them, because my soldering skills were not that good, I did not read the data sheet and so my iron was too hot and I soldered them for too long. Plus by using short wires, all the heat transferred into that fragile glass body.

98 points by bfm 3y ago

If you want to understand how keyboards function go ahead and do this, but unless you want a really wild layout this is just makework. There are cheap, reliable and flexible pcbs for just about every layout you could want available on the open market from sites like kbdfans and aliexpress not to mention dozens of local mom and pop sites that service the mechanical keyboard industry. It's a pretty big hobby these days.

genpfault 3y ago

Any good, mostly-automatic tooling to go from a Keyboard Layout Editor (KLE)[1] JSON to a laid-out (not necessarily routed) PCB design in something like KiCad? [1]: http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/ http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/

winrid 3y ago

What I really want is a mechanical backlit keyboard without terrible PWM flicker. It's so hard on the eyes. Just regular DC dimming would be ideal.

thorncorona 3y ago
Much easier to just up the PWM frequency
- winrid 3y ago
  Maybe. Are there any with very high PWM frequency? It's not well analyzed right now like screens are.
- winrid 3y ago
  My 2018 X1 carbon's laptop backlight, which is adjustable, does not have flicker when recorded in slow-mo, so honestly don't see the excuse really.

bmitc 3y ago

Is there a general source of the, seemingly modern day, fascination with keyboards? I buy the Logitech ergonomic mice and keyboards and call it a day, because they save my wrists but aren't crazy, are easy to buy off the shelf, and integrate well together. For example, I use two different mice and a keyboard across two computers with a single USB receiver with just a simple KVM built-in to my monitor. In my personal experience with computers, the keyboard is the least limiting factor with regards to my interaction.

Karrot_Kream 3y ago
It's a mix of three different cultural factors long extant in the programming community which came together to create today's keyboard culture: 1. Keyboard elitism Until as late as the early 2000s, there was a lot of elitism in programming circles about how using the mouse was something only "lusers" did. Keyboarding was supposedly faster than mousing (even though programmers do a lot more thinking than either keyboarding or mousing) and was the mark of an expert user. These communities would often shill certain keyboards, like the IBM Model M, or the Happy Hacking Keyboard (HHKB) because of their resilience and the feedback one felt from clacking the keys. 2. Customizing/Hacking Not much has to be said here. Hackers have been customizing their setups for as long as setups could be customized. The ability to program custom keyboard layouts and make custom keyboard firmware is as iconic hacking as it gets. 3. Setup as identity culture From the late 2000s, Unix Porn and a lot of other "setup porn" stuff became very popular. People would make cool setups that they really identified with and so setting up your keyboard to express your personal identity became a bit of a hacker rite of passage. While keyboard culture may have started with these ingredients, it's definitely its own thing these days. I'm not in it myself but I like watching it from the sidelines and it's really cool to see what people come up with. Cool layouts, custom firmware, colored keys, experimenting with different layouts. It's just like trying to get the perfect emacs config: more bikeshedding than productivity hack, but I mean it's a hobby, and a fun enriching one at that. As you say the more practical thing is to just buy an ergo keyboard that works with your wrists/shoulders/neck and call it a day. I have a Model M from when I was an impressionable teen who thought owning a Model M and not using the mouse was the be-all-end-all of being a power computer user, but I mostly use a Kinesis Ergo for my day-to-day computing needs. I'm at a (hybrid) startup these days and we don't really have a dedicated office to store stuff in so I bring an HHKB in to the office because of its portability. I use trackballs for my mousing. That's about it. Holding my arms, wrists, and back in ergo positions is much more important to me than any keyboard really. Though really rock climbing has been the single thing that helped my wrists beat RSI where nothing else really could.

bArray 3y ago

Rather than use the knife to cut sections out of the wire, I would have considered getting some single core wire and sliding pre-cut heat shrink down it - that way you don't risk cutting into the wire. Just remember to let the core cool between heating/soldering to prevent premature shrinking.

qwerty456127 3y ago

Sounds very interesting. I have looked through premium and "custom" keyboards market recently and found out their customness mostly is about look&feel, key placement and omitting "unnecessary" keys while I want a positively custom set of keys: as many keys as possible - full keypad, multimedia keys separate from f1-12 keys, Windows context menu key, also programmable macro keys if possible, no spatial "optimizations" (when manufacturers try to fit all the keys into as little area as possible) etc. I concluded I will probably have to really build my own. My ideal keyboard would even have a ThinkPad-style trackpoint so I could operate the mouse pointer comfortably without removing my hands from the home row :-)

rgoulter 3y ago
> omitting "unnecessary" keys .... without removing my hands from the home row The "keep hands on home row" is the motivation behind omitting the "unnecessary" keys, at least for the keyboards which use a small spacebar and give the thumbs more keys to use. With those small 36-key keyboards, your hands pretty much have nowhere to go except to remain on home row. > as many keys as possible I once saw someone made a keyboard with 450 keys. https://relivesight.com/projects/433/ https://relivesight.com/projects/433/
- Mizoguchi 3y ago
  These small keyboards are usually ortholinear which also helps reducing hand movement. I switched to a OLKB Preonic over a year ago and haven't looked back. After you get used to the smaller factor and non staggered keys format you realize how ridiculously and unnecessarily huge and clunky traditional keyboards are, even laptop keyboards. It's like traveling with a 65 liters bag for years before you learn you can just carry a 40L and travel with less crap and much lighter. It took me a couple of months to come up with the layout that worked for me (and even today I still optimizing it), but once I figured it out the typing experience became just such much better. The QMK configuration tool makes the process of configuring the layout painless and super quick, so you just need the patience to try and iterate.
  - 3y ago

onetimeuse92304 3y ago

As an amateur EE, here my thoughts. If you can do CAD you can probably also design a PCB with a socket for some kind of general purpose MCU or even one of ready-made keyboard controllers. Through-hole soldering is IMO actually simpler than making these "spiders" (that's how in my country we call circuits with self-supported wire to wire joints, usually with at least some components hanging in air by their leads). "Spiders" are prone to breaking with any repeatable mechanical strain. In case of this keyboard, what I am seeing is the plastic board will flex and will put repeatable strain on the wires, possibly leading to malfunction at some point. PCB would be much more reliable (if done correctly) as it would take most or all of the load from the joints. A thicker PCB board would actually be more stiff than the plastic board you have here. Not only materials of PCBs tend to be very tough, the PCB, being below the level of the switches, would need much less cutouts that are weakening your plastic mounting board. Stiffness of the board the switches are mounted to is important not just for the reliability, but also for the overall feel of the mechanical keyboard. This "feel" is mainly affected by the switches, the stiffness of the board, and the acoustics of the enclosure. And lastly, as an amateur EE I find "spiders" appealing (if done nicely, artfully). But if you want to showoff for the larger audience that just "don't get it", a custom PCB would immediately score more points.

munificent 3y ago
In English, I think it's "point-to-point": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-to-point_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-to-point_construction
ajsnigrutin 3y ago
As an non-amateur EE, i fully agree with this. If you can draw a basic circuit for 9 keys on paper, you can draw a full-keyboard one in many of the easy cheap PCB platforms, most of which offer a web interface (no installation of any weird software), rendered 3d views and a very cheap production price. If you really want to do it without a chinese PCB manufacturer, you can do it on a perf board ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfboard ). If you have more GPIOs than keys (eg when building a very cheap steam deck with 9/12 keys), you don't even need any kind of "matrix" multiplexing, and you can just connect the keys to individual gpio pins. If you take a better microcontroller than a teensy, you also get bluetooth (and wifi) capabilities, like with eg. esp32 (~$5 on aliexpress). But either way, doing fun electronics, be it on a pcb or when soldering "in the air" is a lot better waste of money and time than many other things most people do.

hellweaver666 3y ago

Building your own keyboards is super satisfying. I started off hand-wiring a couple of macropads and then built a 60% handwire and a split ergo. Finally with all the knowledge I learnt I designed a PCB for a macropad and then just scaled up to my own keyboard which is a 50% ortholinear keyboard which has three extra "macro" switches on the side. I found a switch footprint that allows it to take "normal" or "low profile" style switches so I have a version for home and a super slim version for taking to the office. I think the only thing I would do differently now is to dump QMK and use KMK instead as it's Circuit Python based which means that the firmware can be created and edited directly with your favourite IDE (QMK requires installing all sorts of extra software and compiling etc). If the Microcontroller ever dies on this board I will definitely swap it out for a CircuitPython compatible alternative!

barrenko 3y ago
Could you please post a picture as well? (this goes out to other enthusiasts in this post)

beeforpork 3y ago

Soldering 1N4148 so close to the glass body, plus using a thick drop of solder, makes it really easy to overheat the diode. They are everywhere because they are cheap, not because they are robust... The diodes may become unconditionally conductive, so it may not be an obvious bug. I fried many of them, because my soldering skills were not that good, I did not read the data sheet and so my iron was too hot and I soldered them for too long. Plus by using short wires, all the heat transferred into that fragile glass body.