Quick disclaimer, this is my first blog post ever, please be kind to me. But don't hesitate to give me constructive criticism!
From a Gaming Keyboard to a 42-Keys Split, Columnar, Staggered, Ergonomic Keyboard: My Journey
Yes, I know... there's a lot of fancy terms, let me explain you them and the beginning of my ergonomic/keyboard journey !
Glossary
- What are those words anyway ?!
- Why did I switch ?
- Build from scratch
- Wrist rest Deltahub Carpio 2.0
- Final thoughts
First of all, what ?
The first time I've heard about ergonomic keyboards was on ThePrimeagen stream. I don't think I have to introduce him but basically: Funny man, ex engineer at Netflix (btw), passionate about programming and has a nice mustache.
So Prime uses a Kinesis Advantage 360 and when I first saw him using it, I was like "damn this is so cool!" so I went and learned about ergo keyboards and the deep niche that is the Custom keyboards community.
As a PC gamer, my keyboard journey started with a classic: the Razer Blackwidow Chroma v2 with the Yellow linear switches.
And even after a bit more than 5 years, I have no issue whatsoever with it.
But now, my current daily is a Corne V3 Cherry (Here are details about it from its creator: Foostan).
How is this keyboard ergonomic anyway ?
- It's columnar: it means that each key is in a column (vertically) so you don't have to weirdly bend your fingers to access keys.
- It's staggered: it means that each column of key is more or less higher depending on the finger length so each key is easily accessible without moving your whole hand.
- It's a split keyboard: it means that you have a part for each hand so your hand placement is more natural. Kinesis explains it pretty well.
So, why ?!
As a Software Engineer, I plan to type a lot on a keyboard for most of my life and when you hear about Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, you start to search for solutions and an ergo keyboard is a nice beginning IMO. I have no medical knowledge whatsoever so I can't tell you that it is THE solution and clearly there are a lot of them but to me it's a good start towards a healthy lifestyle.
Building from scratch
I really liked soldering stuff in high school and I missed it. Having to build a Custom Keyboard and configure the firmware in C was the hype of the good DIY project I was looking for !
After watching some YT videos on the Corne keyboard, I was looking for a whole kit so I could do it myself. Fortunately, there is a really nice US company that does that, it is Keebmaker. Why really nice ? Because once I totally screwed my leds soldering (it was so tiny, I kinda gave up at one point to be honest), they sent me a personalized kit with PCBs and pre-soldered leds and I just had to solder the micro-controllers and the OLED screens.
Here is the kit I first had:
They also offer a complete guide on how to solder/built it yourself.
So here are a few pictures of the massacre I did on my first solders. 😭
My apologies to the soldering community...
And frankly, I'm too ashamed to show you my first full PCB with per key LEDs and underglow RGBs.
Anyway, after ordering the PCBs pre-soldered, I de-soldered my micro-controllers and OLED screens to solder them back on those new PCBs. And everything worked out perfectly fine !
It is now time to configure those micro-controllers.
QMK, The firmware
If you don't know anything about custom keyboards, let me introduce you to QMK. QMK (Quantum Mechanical Keyboard) firmware is an Open-Source keyboard firmware that allows a lot of customization and flexibility for custom mechanical keyboards.
If you want to use QMK, you have two options to configure your custom firmware:
- Use QMK Configurator to configure your keyboard's keymap and its layers visually to use the JSON output and flash it to your keyboard
- Create a custom C firmware from scratch or based on the base firmware of your keyboard (all QMK supported keyboards should have a default firmware)
Their documentation is clear and detailed but if you don't get something, they are active on their Discord to help you.
So after a lot of thinking and work, my keymap config is kind of final. I'm happy with what I've made but there are a lot of tweaks and optimizations because of the highly restricted capabilities and storage capacity of my pro micro atmega32u4. This is the base micro-controller model for a lot of custom keyboards and while it's doing a good job for its cheap price, it's limited.
The plan is to swap them with rp2020 micro-controllers later for further capabilities allowing me to add a lot of features to the firmware (especially OLED stuff/games or RGB animations since they are both heavy).
I'm not gonna be specific about my keymap because it's personal, boring and detailed especially because I'm french and I had to make a default QWERTY layer for easy access on characters used in programming like "|&_-([{`' and a custom trigger for AZERTY to use characters like "éèêàùç€".
Wrist rest
As you may have recognized on the banner picture, I have the Deltahub wrist rest Carpio 2.0.
After 4 months of use with my keyboard, I can tell you that they are great. I don't like using them with the mouse especially when I'm gaming because it feels too weird for me (they also reduce my mouse movement speed and it really sucks for FPS games) but they really work for the keyboard.
I think the fact that my keyboard is split AND the fact that I nearly don't use my mouse at all when working makes it more enjoyable than a "basic" keyboard for both of my hands.
It does the job and it does it well. I totally recommend them if you care about ergonomic wrist rest but, to be honest, I would also wait for a promotion/special offer.
I only needed a few days, less than a week to be totally comfortable with them and now it feels really natural and even after hours of coding and/or gaming, I don't feel anything annoying at all.
Final thoughts
In the end, my transition from a standard gaming keyboard to this ergonomic, custom-built Corne has been a very positive experience. While the initial DIY build process had its challenges, the end result has been well worth it (it's also good to know that you can order a slightly more expensive pre-soldered kit to avoid soldering if you are not feeling it).
Not only has it helped avoid potential long-term strain on my hands and wrists, but the highly customizable nature of the keyboard has allowed me to optimize my workflow and productivity quite a lot to be honest (thanks to home row mods for example). If you're also looking to improve your typing comfort and ergonomics, I'd highly recommend exploring the world of custom keyboards. It may just change the way you interact with your computer forever.
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