dactyl-cc VS STONER

Keeping with keywells, there's the split kinesis advantage boards: - Without palm rest: Dactyl CC - With palm rest: Ergo S-1

I need a split keyboard with concave key wells that also has an ergonomic palm/wrist rest like Kinesis Advantage boards have. I borrowed a friend's Kinesis Advantage 2 for a mont last year and it was fantastic - much more comfortable for me than the handful of dactyl and dactyl-manuform variants I've tried (although I wished I could have slightly adjusted the spacing between the two sides). I'm not very able to pay to try a KA360 or Glove80 at the moment, but I have a well-tuned 3D printer and a drawer of various key switches. I know that critical aspects of Kinesis' form factor are patented, but I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions for DIY boards that feel a bit more similar to the real thing. Extra points for boards with 36-ish keys (more keys is fine, too, though). Trackballs are nice, too, but not required - either way, I'll probably add a TrackPoint on the right side. I've had my eye on the Charybdis Nano, but I'm not convinced I'll actually find it comfortable. If anyone has used both the Charybdis and the Kinesis Advantage, subjective comparisons are appreciated. I'm also curious about what the Dactyl-CC, and if people who've tried it feel it lives up to it's description of being more Kinesis-like. Thanks!

I'm building a keyboard inspired by the dactyl-cc (and by the Kinesis Advantage 360 by proxy). Before I started out laying up stuff, I've been thinking on the general layout. All feedback is welcome!

The Dactyl variant the closest to OG Kinesis in spirit is Dactyl-CC AFAIK.

Also worth checking out: https://github.com/mjohns/dactyl-cc

Not sure it qualifies as easy to build, but if you are willing to jump in a bit the Dactyl-cc is designed to feel just like the KA2. That's my current daily driver. It's a 3d printed body, so you'll have to order prints and do some hand wiring. If that's more than you want to sign up for it's probably not a good fit, but I've really enjoyed it. Here's the github: https://github.com/mjohns/dactyl-cc

If you want to make it from scratch, it's based on https://github.com/simonjohansson/STONER which I found to have a couple improvements over dactyl-cc. I then just grafted the trackball in Tinkercad (which you could grab from the v1 right STL if needed).

There is also https://github.com/simonjohansson/STONER, which is a slightly improved version of the Dactly-CC (same layout, but better screw holes, etc.).

Not quite enough keys, a regular keyboard has a column more, so all those keys have to be moved to layers. A layout closer to the Ergodox might be better, e.g. 5x7 or STONER have two more keys on the bottom row, that might already be enough.

I printed a fork of the dactyl-cc (https://github.com/simonjohansson/STONER, which seemed to have a couple tweaks to make it easier to print). The only modifications I made initially were to add /u/qqurn's trackball (just like before, but on the side so that I'm not sacrificing thumb keys), and adding holes for ports, which were missing.