At this level, the DIY keyboard neighborhood is so fashionable that there’s a design to suit nearly each potential want. Should you go in direction of the area of interest aspect, you discover ortholinear layouts, clean key switches, and tremendous low key counts. Mix all of these and also you get Christian Lo’s keezyboost40.
Keezyboost40 is about as minimalist as a keyboard can get with out using stenotype machine-style chorded keysets. It has solely 40 keys, which implies it has to rely closely on layers to symbolize the entire widespread characters. However that retains the dimensions down. To additional scale back the dimensions, Lo selected to offer keezyboost40 an ortholinear format. That places the entire keys in a pleasant orderly grid that takes up as little house as potential. To make the keyboard as skinny as potential (simply 16.5mm), it makes use of Kailh Cho low-profile key switches and low profile key caps. For additional 1337 cred (and to keep away from mismatching layers/legends), all of these key caps are clean and unlabeled.
The one superfluous element on the whole keyboard is a portrait-oriented 1.8” LCD display mounted between the 2 halves of the keyboard. That may show animations, config info (like present layer), and even video games. A full set of SMD (floor mount gadget) diodes stop ghosting and an appropriately minimalistic 3D-printed case frames the keezyboost40 PCB. To manage the LCD and ship key presses to a related laptop, Lo used a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller growth board. It runs firmware programmed in Rust (a language we don’t usually see) that’s primarily based on Keyberon.
This type of keyboard actually isn’t for everybody and also you’d need to retrain your typing muscle reminiscence when you’re not used to ortholinear layouts. However for the fitting individual, keezyboost40 is the proper compact mechanical keyboard.
