I think concave keyboards tend to be more ergonomic than 2d layouts, but to each their own.
I have not been able to find a good entry point. The threads often reference shops, specific people, firmwares or discord communities without going into details.
Does anyone happen to know a good resource for how and where to get started today? What's the state of the art, where to buy what etc.
What makes it worse is that most designs do no have any long-term group studies at all. E.g. Dactyl Manuform keyboards are quite popular, but many long-term users report thumb injuries from using Dactyl Manuforms. Who knows what injuries many of the custom designs can cause long-term? Most hobbyist keyboard designers are not trained medical professionals and basically don't have much of a clue what they are doing.
I would recommend people to start with prebuilt keyboards that have been around for a while and are pretty well-understood and in some cases had input from or testing by experts. Some examples:
- Fixed-split angled Microsoft keyboards (some models had extensive group studies, etc. Some models do break fairly quickly.)
- Logitech ERGO K860
- Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB. This is traditional keyboard but with split and optional tenting (both of which have been shown to be good in various studies, be sure to get the tenting kit).
- Kinesis Advantage, goes all-in with ergonomic features and requires relearning typing a bit. Has been around in various forms for 30 years and is well-understood. Most people who use one swear by it.
- Keyboardio Model 100. The precursor (Model 01) has been around for many years. The design seems sane and I haven't seen many complaints.
- ZSA Ergodox EZ/Moonlander: these are quite popular. But be careful, quite many people report having thumb issues after a while.
I don't know any proven designs with trackballs, I have seen some people complain about integrated trackballs becoming uncomfortable after a while.
I've been using a corne for two years with absolutely no pain/issues (not that I had any issues before I started using it, though)
This is a bit of a trope in places like /r/ErgoMechKeyboards/. However, it's a bit of an empty statement without further data. Of course hand sizes/shapes differ, but the question is if they differ enough to preclude designs that work for a majority of the population. If you look at e.g. hand length/width datasets, within a group (e.g. men) these are close to a normal distribution. And the spread is not that large. e.g. the different in hand width in the ANSUR II 2012 dataset is 0.6cm between the 25th and the 75th percentile for men. The difference in hand length is 1.3 cm between the 25th and 75th percentile.
So, it's very likely to be possible to design a keyboard that fits most people well enough. Sure, if your hand size is an outlier you may have to get creative.
Besides that, there is also some latitude in designing ergo keyboards for multiple hand sizes. See eg. how Moergo iterated for several years so come up with a design that works for many different hand sizes [1].
[1] https://www.moergo.com/pages/glove80-ergonomic-keyboard-desi...
The Ergo K860 looks nice. I've also been eyeing the Kinesis Advantage 360, though it has no F-Keys. Another option would be the Glove80. The MS/Logitech keyboards are super cheap in comparison. Would you say not having ortholinear keys is a big difference for ergonomics?
I don't think there is much proof in terms of scientific studies that column stagger is better (column stagger is usually preferable over ortholinear), so can only really give my personal experience. I strongly prefer column stagger, I can still type row stagger and sometimes use my laptop's keyboard when I travel, but all these lateral movements feel awkward now.
I've also been eyeing the Kinesis Advantage 360
The 360 is really nice (I have a 360 Pro), but I'd order it somewhere where you can return it easily (eg. Kinesis themselves). For me, the Gateron Browns in the 360 are quite a large regression compared to the Cherry Browns in the Advantage2. The Gaterons are smoother, but their actuation point is way lower. Gateron specs say 2mm, but it's closer to 3mm in practice. This makes typing on the 360 quite tiring for me. So it's mostly collecting dust currently (I am using the Advantage2 and the Model 100 most of the time). But this is really personal, some other people do like the Gateron switches.
I wrote up a short review of the 360 Pro here:
I think having Ortho layout makes using the numpad on the Kinesis a lot better. The big ergo benefit to me is the thumb clusters and the fact I can remap keys like (),[],{},~ to be easier to press. I have setup the "delete" key on the thumb cluster to be a layer shift and moved symbols to easier to press fingers than ridiculous pinky extensions. The numpad is also easy to use since I just hit delete and then it's already under my right hand and I don't have to move it. Since it's Ortho it feels like a numpad. Previously I never really used the numpad because I didn't like moving my hand over but now most of my numbers are typed that way.
I don't think MS/Logitech boards go far enough even in the split department.
The quality has been great. It's lasted 15 or so years now.
I switched to an optimized keyboard layout (neo2 - German) in 2006 when I had carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands and then also switched to one of those ergonomic keyboards.
Now, I'm basically looking for a successor.
Complaints? No Home/End. The extra B on the right side is weird. The proximity of the arrow keys means sometimes I hit the left arrow-key when pressing backspace. But those are all easy to adjust to, I think. I'm excited to finally have a good, modern replacement for the Natural keyboards. Highly recommend this one.
And basically a lot of reports on Reddit. Eg.:
https://old.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/ubcxup/e... https://old.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/umg2j5/e... https://old.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/lj3n45/p...
Of course, these are just anecdotes and we don't have good research into all the individual designs, but there seems to be a pattern. The movement is also similar to what causes texter's thumb.
At any rate, I am not an ergonomics professional, so if you are switching to a more ergonomic keyboard because you have pains, you should ask and expert what works and what doesn't.
Generally, the shops I've seen are all quite happy to sell parts, & provide assembly guides. I think those are good starting points for learning about the things you don't know.
https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-q11-qmk-custom-me...
https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-q10-alice-layout-...
https://ploopy.co/mini-trackball/ <-- this one has buttons and a scroll wheel.
I have a Keychron Q10 and program it with the "via" software, which works great. I also have a Ploopy mouse, which requires QMK compilation to customize. That worked out great for me, because I love tinkering.
It's really difficult to encapsulate all that goes into a keyboard and mouse/trackball, like you said the communities create huge amounts of information, commentary, and designs. Which is why companies like Keychron are doing great work creating "layman" accessible keyboards.
QMK is literally compiling C code into firmware. You can leave off LED effects if you want, use complex macros, rules, and layers, or cut out everything that you don't use. I mentioned my mouse earlier: it has 2 layers, the second of which is accessed by holding down a button. That gives me access to almost twice as many buttons! I have a volume control on my mouse's second layer, plus "paste plain text on MacOS". Very cool stuff and incredibly useful!
Via is a QMK that is designed to be updated without the C toolchain present. It uses an Electron front end and is pretty straightforward to use. Obviously it's more restricted in what it can do, but I think it covers 99.9% of use cases.
I wish I could write more, but I have to go for surgery. If you ask questions here, I should be able to respond by late evening US eastern time May 1st.
I'd already be happy if there were mechanical keyboards out there that offered USB passthrough to connect things like yubikeys, a trackpad or headphones. So far the only one I'm aware that has those is the Royal Kludge rk84, but I doesn't seem to be a popular choice.
However the board is not yet open source, like many Japanes custom boards.
I use museum wax as the mounting method, which allows slight adjustments but is otherwise a firm hold.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/kinesisadvantage/comments/s2n2k3/ki...
It's just really hard to follow when you're only casually browsing.
I am following on the steps of FlatFootFox to replicate the Corne (Cherry) in code, WIP for the moment: https://github.com/ceoloide/corney-island
Don't forget to support the creator of Ergogen, MrZealot: https://github.com/sponsors/mrzealot
I have a key layout in mind, and I just want a ready product, not to fiddle with hardware and firmware myself.
The order lot is very tiny of maybe 4-5 pcs.
The layout is quite simple QWERTY, based on Omnikey Ultra T.
Perhaps 500-800 US$ for 5 finished keyboards.
Similar to this Omnikey Ultra T, in a similar build quality, but with few keys rearranged. I wish the F11 and F12 on the life side to be below F9 and F10 keys.
https://www.thurrott.com/forums/general-discussion/hardware/...
I like the heavy metal bottom plate, but can be (cheaper) molded plastic.
My current Ultra T is at end of life, I am resoldering the gradually failing white ALPS.
1: https://www.cherrymx.de/en/dev.html 2: https://youtu.be/yYcNi9hKxDk?t=688 3: https://thangs.com/designer/ZackFreedman/3d-model/KeyV2%20G2...
Then there's the whole "artisan" community, which sculpt and cast individual keycaps in various designs and shapes, more for looks and collecting than for typing on. I've seen group buys of tooling for making these.
1. <https://www.wasdkeyboards.com>
2. <https://en.xvxchannel.com/en-eu/products/xvx-custom-art-icon...>
