This is so cool! Kinda wanna make a xiao drop-in replacement board for these chips now :D
ErgoMechKeyboards
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!?)
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Some useful links
- EMK wiki
- Split keyboard compare tool
- Compare keycap profiles Looking for another set of keycaps - check this site to compare the different keycap profiles https://www.keycaps.info/
- Keymap database A database with all kinds of keymap layouts - some of them fits ergo keyboards - get inspired https://keymapdb.com/
Go for it! I have a schematic in mind but too lazy to learn KiCad. Would love to help out :)
so, ummm...
(obviously not final, just a quick mock-up)
Looking good! DM'd you
Fantastic, I'll take you up on that offer! :)
Also, there's a commercially available CH552T dev board for about a dollar. I actually use this for development: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004141926425.html
Even cheaper if you buy just the chip. Just add a USB connector and two capacitors then that's it. No crystal, flash, etc. needed. A CH552G goes for about 30 cents: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003402478164.html
Yeah WCH make some really cheap chips. Apart from ch552, there is also a family of BLE chips such as ch571f that is much more efficient than ESP32 (from online sources) and is very cheap. You can get the chip for half a dollar (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005974200193.html) and a development board for less than 3 dollars (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005974200193.html). When I bought it on taobao, it is actually around 1.3 dollars.
The downside is that software support does not exist (yet), so will have to try and make a firmware for it. I haven't yet found time as I was working on manifold things.
Cool! Though CH58/9x series might be better for efficiency because it's Bluetooth 5. CH57x is BT 4.
And QMK has already been ported to CH582 but personally haven't tried it yet. https://github.com/O-H-M2/qmk_port_ch582
Nice, I can buy ch582f dev board for 2 dollars. Still very cheap!
This is so cool! Couldn't find it on the GitHub page, but does this firmware also support wireless or maybe can be extended for that?
Thanks! No CH55x chip supports Bluetooth so it's USB only. I thought of possibly adding a Bluetooth module, but that's almost always a SoC and you're much better off using that as the main (and only) microcontroller instead.
There's this: https://forum.arduino.cc/t/jdy-23-bluetooth-module/672581 Could work as a "dumb" BT module but even so, it can't do HID over BT directly so have to translate that to HID with another chip. Not so power efficient too.
Basically, I've been through this path and it always led me to: just use one MCU with BT. Fortunately, CH582 is a cheap one. RISC-V with BLE. And it's been recently ported to QMK as well: https://github.com/O-H-M2/qmk_port_ch582
Got it, I was mostly curious if fak would/could be extended to the CH582.
I assumed that QMK would be wired, but looking through the repo, seems like it does support wireless as well! https://github.com/O-H-M2/qmk_port_ch582
Hmm actually, FAK could be extended to CH582. It would have to be a complete rewrite on the hardware code, but I could keep the Nickel config mostly compatible between CH55x and CH58x.
You just gave me an idea. Sounds like I can make a FAK spec and then there'd be compliant hardware-specific implementation for different chips 🤯
Yep, and I think they're even working on dongle mode. They call it "triple 2.4G" on the readme.