I made a keyboard!

Another keyboard!

https://dotat.at/@/2023-08-04-keybird.html

HHKbeeb

A couple of years ago I made a BBC Micro tribute keyboard in the runup to the beeb's 40th anniversary. I called it HHKBeeb:

The HHKBeeb is made from:

• keycaps designed by me and printed by WASD
• Yiancar HS60 PCB
• generic HHKB aluminium / acrylic sandwich case
• Cherry MX clear key switches

I planned to make a beeb-style acrylic sandwich case, but it was too hard to choose a place to get the acrylic cut, so that never happened.

In practice I find 60% keyboards (like the Happy Hacking Keyboard) too small -- I need an arrow cluster. So I used the HHKBeeb with a Keybow 2040 macro pad to give me arrows and a few function keys for moving windows around.

Keybird69

My new keyboard is for a Finch and it has 69 keys, so it's called Keybird69. (I was surprised that this feeble pun has not already been used by any of the keyboards known to QMK or VIA!)

It is made from:

• Signature Plastics DSS "Dolch" keycaps
• Cherry MX clear key switches with a few Cherry MX silent blacks for the modifier keys.
• Waveshare RP2040-Tiny controller board and USB socket
• a pretty purple PCB designed by me and made by JLCPCB
• black FR-4 copper-plated fibreglass switch plate and base plate, also made by JLCPCB.
• enclosure sides are LEGO Technic beams
• generic conical aluminium feet like the ones that came with the HHKBeeb case

why?

A combination of reasons:

• The HHKBeeb and Keybow 2040 never stayed put, so I would often get my fingers on the wrong keys when moving my right hand some varying distance between them;
• Although I like the HHKBeeb's ECMA-23 bit-paired layout in theory, in practice it's super annoying to switch between it and my laptop's more normal layout;
• I had a cunning idea for using LEGO in the enclosure, which avoid the problem of getting acrylic cut to spec;
• Learning to use KLE, LeoCAD, KiCad, and QMK was lots of fun.

story time

I have been mildly obsessed with compact keyboards practically forever, but back in the 1990s there were no good options available to buy, so I made do without.

The first small keyboard I liked was the (now discontinued) HHKB Lite 2, which has an arrow cluster unlike the pure HHKB. I have a couple of these lurking in the Boxes Of Stuff in the corner. But I'm not a huge fan of the limited modifiers, or the Topre key switches (they're a bit mushy), or the styling of the HHKB case.

Correction: the HHKB Lite 2 did not actually use Topre switches.

I gradually used Macs more, and switched to using the Apple Aluminium keyboard - the model A1242 compact wired version, and the model A1314 wireless version. I also switched from a Kensington Expert Mouse trackball to an Apple Magic Trackpad.

But then Apple lost the plot with its input devices, so I thought I should plan to wean myself off. And in the mean time, the custom keyboard scene had flourished into a vibrant ecosystem of open source hardware and software.

So instead of relying on someone else to make a keyboard I like, I could make one myself! My own PCB and switch plate, designed for just the layout I want.

And with QMK open source firmware, I can make good use of the fn key that was so disappointingly unconfigurable on the HHKB and Apple keyboards.

what's next

I'm planning to write some more notes about various details of the design:

• The unix69 keyboard layout
• Some subtleties of keycaps
• LEGO Technic beam sandwich keyboard enclosure
• Designing and manufacturing the Keybird69 PCB

The unix69 keyboard layout: nerdy and nice

https://dotat.at/@/2023-08-04-unix69.html

A proper Unix keyboard layout must have escape next to 1 and control next to A.

Compared to the usual ANSI layout, backquote is displaced from its common position next to 1. But a proper Unix keyboard should cover the entire ASCII repertoire, 94 printing characters on 47 keys, plus space, in the main block of keys.

To make a place for backquote, we can move delete down a row so it is above return, and put backslash and backquote where delete was.

(Aside: the delete key emits the delete character, ASCII 127, and the return key emits the carriage return character, ASCII 13. That is why I don't call them backspace and enter.)

This produces a layout similar to the main key block of Sun Type 3, Happy Hacking, and True Fox keyboard layouts.

Personally, I prefer compact keyboards so I don't have to reach too far for the mouse, but I can't do without arrow keys. So a 65% keyboard size (5 rows, 16 keys wide) is ideal.

If you apply the Unix layout requirements to a typical ANSI 68-key 65% layout, you get a 69-key layout. I call it unix69. (1969 was also the year Unix started.)

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/2848ea7a272aa571d140694ff6bbe04c

I have arranged the bottom row modifiers for Emacs: there are left and right meta keys and a right ctrl key for one-handed navigation. Meta is what the USB HID spec calls the "GUI" key; it sometimes has a diamond icon legend. Like the HHKB, and like Unix workstations made by Apple and Sun, the meta keys are either side of the space bar.

There are left and right fn keys for things that don't have dedicated keys, e.g. fn+arrows for page up/page down, home, end. The rightmost column has user-programmable macro keys, which I use for window management.

unix69 vs ansi 65%

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/6610c45b1c12f962e6cf564dc66f220b

ANSI 65% keyboards have caps lock where control should be.

They have an ugly oversized backslash and lack a good place for backquote.

The right column is usually wasted on fixed-function keys.

It's common for 65% keyboards to have 67 or 68 keys, the missing key making a gap between the modifiers and arrow keys on the bottom row. I prefer to have more rather than fewer modifier keys.

unix69 vs true fox

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/f1742e8e1384449ddbb7635d8c2a91a5

Matteo Spinelli's Whitefox / Nightfox "True Fox" layout has top 2 rows similar to unix69. It sometimes has backslash and backquote swapped.

Unfortunately it has caps lock where control should be. Its right column is wasted on fixed-function keys (though the keyboards are reprogrammable so it's mainly a keycap problem).

On the bottom row, True Fox has two modifers and a gap between space and arrows, whereas unix69 has three modifiers and no gap.

unix69 vs hhkb

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/c654dc6b4c7e30411cad8626302e309f

The Happy hacking keyboard layout is OK for a 60% Unix layout. However it lacks a left fn key, and lacks space for full-size arrow keys, so I prefer a 65% layout.

unix69 vs keybird69

https://dotat.at/graphics/keybird69.jpg

Owing to the difficulty of getting keycaps with exactly the legends I would like, the meta keys on my keybird69 are labelled super and the delete key is labelled backspace. I used F1 to F4 keycaps for the macro keys, tho they are programmed to generate F13 to F16 which are set up as Hammerspoon hot keys.

But otherwise keybird69 is a proper unix69 keyboard.