keyboards

Three delayed keyboards (or four future keyboards)

Post published:March 2, 2016
Post author:philip

Anyone who has been involved with crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, and particularly those who have backed hardware products, know all about product delays. I've written before about how crowdfunding sites are invigorating the hardware startup market, allowing hardware products to reach the market that would never have done so in the past. The flip side is of course that not all the hardware products that receive crowdfunding do in fact reach the market. Many crowdfunded products have famously failed, such as the Eyez by ZionEyez HD video recording glasses whose principles seemed to simply disappear off the face of the planet without delivering any products (and it's unclear if they ever worked on their product at all). That case was covered by Forbes and Network World, although it only raises about $350,000. More recently Kickstarter has made it harder for pie-in-the-sky hardware ideas to make it onto the site. One interesting case was the Skarp Laser Razor, which raised over $4 Million on Kickstarter before the site suspended their campaign. The company quickly switched to IndieGoGo and raised over $450,000. Whether Kickstarter was right and the project ultimately fails remains to be seen. A product doesn't need to be crowdfunded to be…

An infographic for the keyboard-obsessed

Post published:February 10, 2016
Post author:philip

The web site Go Mechanical Keyboard just released the results of their semi-annual keyboard survey in the form of a very nice infographic, which I've displayed below. You can view the raw data online if you want. 950 people responded from 49 different countries. You need to be a bit obsessed with keyboards to understand everything in the infographic, although if you've been following my other posts on keyboards you should get most of it. Form factor? See my post "How many keys are there on a keyboard?". Switch types? See my recent post "A keyboard with swappable switches" where I change the switches that came with the keyboard. What do you think about the infographic?

A keyboard with swappable switches

Post published:December 23, 2015
Post author:philip

It started out with a post to Reddit that linked to a series of photos on Imgur of a new keyboard the user had ordered from the Chinese e-commerce site Taobao. Taobao, for those who don't know, is a Chinese-language-only e-commerce site run by Alibaba Group that caters to residents of China and nearby countries where people speak Chinese. Many sellers on the site, even if you could navigate the site in Chinese, won't ship outside of China. To meet demand, a whole crop of sites have sprung up just to help foreigners order products from Taobao. These 'Taobao agents' will order the product for you, receive the product in China, and then re-ship it to you wherever you are in the world. Of course, that service comes with a price, and in many cases that eliminates any cost savings you might get from ordering from Taobao. Occassionally, however, there are products on Taobao that are not available elsewhere. In this case, the user (redditsavedmyagain) ordered a keyboard that was in fact quite unique. The keyboard is called the Team Wolf Zhuque+. I had never heard of it and before that post on Reddit most other people had never heard of it either.…

Hand-wiring a keyboard

Post published:August 24, 2015
Post author:philip

As part of an effort to teach myself hardware design, I've wanted to hand-build a keyboard. I ordered a top and bottom plate from Ortholinear Keyboards a couple of months ago (their 60% Atomic Semi-Standard design), but didn't have the switches I needed to put it together. Recently I received a set of Gateron switches through a group buy, and started work on the keyboard. One of the reasons I chose the Atomic kit was frankly that it was one of the least expensive options available to get started. The kit includes the top plate (a steel plate with holes cut to place the key switches), and a bottom plate that has matching screw holes to the top plate. A bag of screws and brass spacers allows one to attach the two plates. It is a very simple design. There is no circuit board to attach the switches to like most other keyboard kits. The Atomic needs to be hand-wired. That appealed to me as well, because I felt hand-wiring the keyboard internals would give me a much better understanding of its inner workings. To start one simply pushes the switches into the holes in the top plate. The switches are…

The evolution and commercialization of the ErgoDox keyboard

Post published:March 31, 2015
Post author:philip

Infinity ErgoDox

I mentioned the ErgoDox keyboard in my article A few interesting keyboards nearly in existence.... Strictly speaking, the ErgoDox was already in existence at the time (almost exactly a year ago), but as I pointed out, it wasn't a commercial product. The ErgoDox keyboard was originally designed by Geekhack.org user Dox (aka Dominic Beauchamp), and developed in a thread started on October 10, 2011 titled ErgoDox - Custom split ergo keyboard with input from the Geekhack community. The design was based in part on the earlier Key64 concept, which itself derives its ideas from a variety of earlier keyboards, and partly from the layout of the Kinesis Advantage keyboard (in particular the thumb cluster). What's amazing, considering that hundreds (maybe thousands) of ErgoDox keyboards have been sold, is that Dox was originally hoping to get 5-10 people to commit to buying it to bring down his costs. When the design was completed, and the PCB finished (the PCB design was done by geekhack user bpiphany - aka Fredrik Atmer), the design was made available for free online. MassDrop "Group Buys" A kit containing all the parts needed to assemble the keyboard was made available first via MassDrop, a site that allows…

How many keys are there on a keyboard?

Post published:March 24, 2015
Post author:philip

Full-Size Keyboard Layout

Longtime readers of this blog might have noticed my interest in computer keyboards. Most people today just use the keyboard that comes on their laptop, or the virtual one on their tablet. The basic layout of the keyboard dates back over a hundred years to early typewriters, but the more modern layout of the keyboard dates back to 1986 and the emergence of the IBM Enhanced Keyboard for the Personal Computer, which debuted the 101-key layout which has become the standard full-size keyboard layout to this day. Microsoft bumped the layout to 104 keys with the addition of Windows keys and a Menu key a bit later, but the layout is essentially the same. This is a rule-of-thumb, as no two keyboards are exactly the same. The number of keys on a full size keyboard varies, some having media keys, etc. The layout, more or less, is the following: It's worth pointing out that the 101/104 layout is the standard layout in the US, called ANSI (American National Standards Institute), while in Europe there is slightly different 102/105 key layout called ISO (International Organization for Standardization). The ISO layout has an extra key (to the right of the left-side Shift key),…

The rise of hardware startups – thank you crowdfunding

Post published:June 26, 2014
Post author:philip

Keyboardio Model o1

I've worked in both hardware and software companies over the years, and both are interesting and challenging, but there there is something special about making something you can hold in your hand, and that people will see on store shelves (even if virtual). One of the amazing things that crowdfunding sites have enabled is hardware products to come out faster and from smaller companies than was possible in the past. I should add that almost all great hardware companies have great software behind them. Certainly with any electronic product, there is software controlling it. Sure, not all hardware needs software – my friend's Grape Ninja product which became the OXO Tomato & Grape Cutter – doesn't need software to operate. It did benefit from crowdfunding as part its marketing campaign, however, before moving to OXO. I've touched on this, particularly in Crowdfunding hardware and Sous Vide cooking, and earlier in discussing A few interesting keyboards, nearly in existence…, and I think this trend towards individuals and small teams coming out with more innovative hardware faster is only going to accelerate as more and more successful products come to market. In A few interesting keyboards, nearly in existence… I mentioned Keyboardio, a company started by an…

How I would re-design the Kinesis Advantage keyboard

Post published:April 4, 2014
Post author:philip

Kinesis Advantage Pro

I'm a fan of the Kinesis Advantage keyboard, but it's definitely long-in-the-tooth these days. The keyboard's basic design reaches back over twenty years. The current USB version was introduced in 2002, and I don't think there have been any significant changes in the past twelve years. I've seen rumors of a re-vamped version, but nothing has been released. As you can tell from my previous posts, I believe there is a big difference between convenience features (such as wireless, backlit keys, etc.) and ergonomic features in keyboards. On the ergonomics side I don't think Kinesis needs to make many changes to what is a popular design. There are some changes that could be made, such as perhaps splitting the left and right sides, or making the keyboard more adjustable. On the convenience side, however, I think there are a lot of changes Kinesis could make to the keyboard. Here are my suggestions for the next generation of the Kinesis Advantage: Cut the cord When I originally wrote the heading above I was thinking wireless (see below) but the truth is, the one thing that has annoyed me the most over the years about the Advantage is that the USB cable…

A few interesting keyboards, nearly in existence…

Post published:April 1, 2014
Post author:philip

Keyboard.io (Blog)

My last post, Why haven't there been any keyboard innovations in decades?, got some interesting responses. A couple of people said I was ignoring much of the progress in the past decade, citing lots of features added to keyboards like backlit keys, keys with displays built in, wireless, etc. These are all nice features, but they're convenience features. None of those features make typing more comfortable, or reduce repetitive stress injuries. Features that do those things are ergonomic features, and were the focus of my article. A few people said standard keyboards were just fine, so no innovation was needed. I suspect those people are still in their twenties, and haven't realized the effect of typing on their hands yet. Stay with your straight keyboard with membrane switches and then come back and tell us in a few years which ergonomic keyboard you've switched to... ErgoDox Someone also pointed out that I left out the enthusiast community, pointing out the ErgoDox keyboard and its distribution through MassDrop as an example. Now don't get me wrong, I love the design work done by individuals and collectively through projects like the ErgoDox. However, when the easiest way to buy a product is…

Why haven’t there been any keyboard innovations in decades?

Post published:March 30, 2014
Post author:philip

Early Maltron Keyboard

This might seem surprising coming from someone whose first job was for a speech recognition company more than 20 years ago, and whose current company also develops speech recognition software. I'm extremely annoyed at the lack of innovation in keyboards. It's not surprising that attention to keyboard design has lagged in recent years, when production of laptops long ago overtook the production of desktop machines, and tablets will soon overtake the combined production of both laptops and desktops. Take a look at this chart from IDC: If you count cell phones in the mix, the production of desktop computers is a tiny percentage of overall computing devices. Sure, some people use external keyboards with laptops, but overall the need for external keyboards in dwindling. Unfortunately, laptop keyboards have different design goals than external keyboards. While innovation in external keyboards usually has to do with comfort over long periods of typing, reduction in repetitive stress injuries, etc. laptop keyboards are usually focused on simply fitting into a very narrow space. Other considerations are of course secondary. The only real innovation in laptop keyboards that I can remember was IBM's introduction of its butterfly keyboard in the ThinkPad 701 laptop in 1995.…