More pics: https://imgur.com/a/iYK45eQ

I’ve been lurking r/emk for a while and never shared anything useful, but since Lemmy community is getting traction, I thought it’s a good opportunity to brag a little.

I just got the first prototype of my custom ergo board working a few days ago. It still has no plate, no name, no case and a few things I’d like to tweak eventually, but I’m very happy about my first PCB design and first time I used KiCAD not turning into a piece of junk immediately.

I’ve been looking at a lot of thumb cluster designs and asking some people using all the kyrias, hillsides, irises and such how usable/comfortable the upper keys are and decided to try out something like Pinky4/RockOn/pinkies out in hope of having a comfortable 4 key thumb cluster on a flat keyboard. I’m still getting used to it and slowly developing muscle memory, but I think it’s a moderate success. I use the upper keys as layer toggle and it’s not bad if a little unfamiliar. I’ve also considered going splayed for a moment, but decided to go with 1.5u pinky column, so I can place my pinky anywhere I like and it’s an absolute joy. I love the look and feel. Sourcing keycaps is definitely a little awkward, but I only use blank DSA anyway. Having some troubles with setting up my first handwired split I never got around to finish, then my Let’s Split PCB from falbatech, which I never got to finish (see the pattern?) I decided to go with single MCU design and was unsure about the connector until I saw cheapino by tompi and I knew that was it. Very sturdy and solid connection. However the standard cat5 cable is a little too stiff for my liking and I’m gonna look for something more flexible. I’m happy to see my first PCB design work, however, it’s not without its flaws. I copied the design from cheapino, but didn’t notice that some pins on the RJ45 are messed up and I had to make a custom cable, or one row pin would be permanently shorted to ground. Another issue is that I forgot to measure the footprint for RP2040Zero I got from SadekBaroudi (thank you for awesome repository and your boards being a huge inspiration) so it can’t be mounted from underneath the PCB as I originally planned. This will make designing the plate a little more difficult.

That being said, I’m really happy with what I achieved. The board is comfy, PCBs from JLCPCB are great quality and programming RP2040 is much less tedious and forgiving than pro micro, with the added benefit of a USB socket that doesn’t break away the minute you look at it with too much force. It has support for both hot-swap and soldered low profile Gateron KS-27 switches, that are cheap and pretty cool in my opinion and the spacing is a little tighter at 18.5mm making the board pretty portable. (Aside from the switches falling out of the sockets due to lack of the plate I still haven’t got enough time to cut out) I also broke my fear of PCB design and the whole “I’m too dumb for this.”

I’m nowhere near finished with this one, however I don’t know how long it will take me to make the plate, case and another revision of PCB, since I already started using it as a daily driver and I love it. Once I finish everything I planned, I will open source the PCB, CAD and QMK files. Hope you enjoy it.

Cheers, Arth.

PS: I’m so glad we’ve moved into a decentralised network, no matter how good or bad Lemmy is. I only joined today, but for most of the problems with today’s internet, FOSS is the answer. Great move!