this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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ErgoMechKeyboards

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Ergonomic, split and other weird keyboards

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Posts must be of/about keyboards that have a clear delineation between the left and right halves of the keyboard, column stagger, or both. This includes one-handed (one half doesn't exist, what clearer delineation is that!?)

i.e. no regular non-split¹ row-stagger and no non-split¹ ortholinear²

¹ split meaning a separation of the halves, whether fixed in place or entirely separate, both are fine.
² ortholinear meaning keys layed out in a grid

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I’ve never been much of a musical person. But my kid was playing with a toy piano the other day, pressing buttons and whatnot. I lay my fingers on the keyboard and thought “hmmm… kinda like the home row”.

So my question to the community: have any of you built musical keyboards? Did you post a blog or guide? At first I was thinking a choc switch with a custom long cap that was held off a pivot point at one end and attached to the switch at the other. But musical keyboards vary sound depending on how you press the note. So maybe Hall effect?

Anyway, keen to hear of any adventures down this road by others?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Getting it to make a sound is (probably) easy but realistically emulating piano action would be really hard. Reputable electronic pianos all mimic real piano mechanics to a degree, e.g., the visible portion of an individual key is only a fraction of its entire length in order to give you the "weight" and "speed" of the real key action, which would be hard to reproduce with e.g. a shorter key + spring. A search of "hammer actions" should give you some idea