splitKbCompare VS ErgoDox

The tool is built in an unusual fashion - the images are in an adobe Illustrator file, and then exported as pngs for the separate layers. I suspect you can open the source files in AI and pull out the vectors your after. Here's the repo: https://github.com/jhelvy/splitKbCompare

I used a Kinesis Advantage as my main keyboard for 10 years. A few years ago I got an Ergodox EZ, but just couldn't get into it. I've been using a NiZ Atom68 as my main keyboard for over a year now and am rather happy with it. I have plans to build and try

These days I think that there are so many good community designed keyboards [0] that it behooves anyone who has the notion they'd like something better than a standard layout keyboard to do a bit of research and testing. For any keyboard layout it is fairly trivial to make a printout and stick it to your desk to get an impression of how it fits your hand size/shape and your preferred resting/neutral position.

Recently I've found Ben Vallack [1] to be an excellent resource on keyboard customization and his philosophy echoes my own, though he shows much more dedication to the craft and exploration of keyboarding than I could ever hope or wish to. He has an excellent series on designing and making your own keyboard [2], as well as well thought out explanations and explorations of creating and learning personalized keyboard layouts [3][4]. His more general explorations of usability in computing and beyond have been inspiring as well [5].

  0: https://github.com/jhelvy/splitKbCompare

Try some split layouts on paper to get an idea https://github.com/jhelvy/splitKbCompare

alright, i've informed jhelvy (via github issue) about my plan to move his useful tool to a wiki entry. so let us wait for some days before someone make the thread about keymap and stuff.

The keyboard will also be added to the split keyboard layout comparison site. It's been added in the queue.

Hi again, just wanted to update you that I've opened and issue to add Manibus to the splitKbComparison website: https://github.com/jhelvy/splitKbCompare/issues/60

https://www.ergodox.io/, been around forever now.

Closest split PCB based design with a Kinesis Advantage thumb cluster, I know of, is the Ergodox Would need tenting to emulate the keywells. Lovingly design and print a case with tenting legs for it? 🤔

Should be in here somewhere: https://github.com/Ergodox-io/ErgoDox

> Is ZSA's build known to have latency issues compared to QMK?

ZSA is using a patched QMK - they even let you download the exact source for each firmware build they make for you. At the time when I switched to vanilla QMK (that was already some years ago), ZSA were veeery far behind master; running the latest QMK release fixed a couple of issues for me (like hotplugging the halves), so I guess there could be other improvements? No idea really.

> Would a faster microprocessor help

In the MCU world, latency and clock speed can have a very linear relationship - until they suddenly don't. The microcontroller's job is very simple really: scan the key matrix at a certain frequency, perform key debouncing, compare the current state with the previous, and craft a USB HID packet with key press/release events.

So having twice the clock speed could theoretically let you scan twice as often, so it might let you cut the latency in half. Except we have those pesky physics getting in our way! For simplicity let's assume we don't have split halves (where there's an extra serial connection slowing things down); I'm no EE so I only grasp these concepts at the surface level, but signals take time to propagate, and long traces on the PCB (and cables too) have a tiny bit of their own capacitance. (Capacitors are like really fast, really tiny batteries - but they still take a tiny amount of time to charge and discharge, which does all sorts of interesting things to high-frequency signals.)

On top of that, the electrical connection that the pieces of metal are making inside the switch, are never perfect at the exact instant the switch is supposed to (de)register: a couple electrons might start jumping over the air even before contact is made, and the physical connection is subject to normal wear, amplifying the "edge case" effect over its lifetime - which all together means we have to actually spend a certain amount of time "looking" at the state of the switch, to let it settle and make sure we got it right.

We end up spending so much time letting physics do its job that in a trivial firmware, the MCU is actually spending a significant amount of time... just sleeping. Which means we were later able to cram all sorts of madness like individual RGB lightning or status displays, and never decreased the poll rate.

Where would these 40ms come from then? Well I wouldn't get near the problem without an oscilloscope, and unfortunately I don't have one.

> I'm just starting to get into custom keyboards.

Then I recommend studying the original ErgoDox firmware & build instructions! It's extremely straightforward compared to a beast like QMK, which actually uses a whole RTOS.

https://www.ergodox.io/; https://github.com/benblazak/ergodox-firmware

Hi! Does anyone here have some experience playing age on an ergodox? I usually move the right part out of the way so that I can have more space for the mouse (it is actually great for things like FPS because the mouse hand is in a very natural position), but the default hotkeys force me to move my left hand across both sides, making it hard to actually hit the key without looking. I've been only using control groups 1-5 due to this, which is less than optimal.

The closest open source keyboard you'll get next to the Moonlander is probably the ErgoDox that it's heavily inspired from.