After two hours of fixating on it I have discovered I am not hardcore enough for a split keyboard. 🤪
The ones that seem most appealing are custom built and I just don't have the hardware knowledge or expendible income go gain it / the tools for it at the moment.
I too was (and still am) overwhelmed by the wide world of (mostly DIY) keyboards. I got an ergodox ez after seeing a coworker use it for a long time. It’s been a learning experience, for sure, and I bet there are “better” keyboards for me out there, but going from no-split-keyboard to yes-split-keyboard has made a huge difference in pain/posture.
@marty Pain relief is defs pretty high on my priorities. I also find that having to move my hand to my mouse adds a bunch of extra pain.
Low key been thinking of just using the controller portion of my steam deck and speech to text instead of typing+mouse. The lil trackpad has been way nicer to use for everything but typing.
@mauve For sure it's often a lot of both time and money. That said (and not intended as advice) I'm pretty happy with my Keyboardio version of the open Atreus design because I didn't have to build it and the software was easy peasy for me.
https://shop.keyboard.io/products/keyboardio-atreus
@trevorflowers @marty Interesting, ty for the links.
I think my needs are a bit different from what most keyboards cater to.
What I really want is:
- As few keys as possible
- Thumb-accessible mouse or trackball
- Split in two halves
- Bluetooth enabled
The closest that I found that meets my wants is the Dilemma from Bastard Keyboards, but that doesn't have BT and there's no easy path to add it. https://bastardkb.com/product/dilemma/
@trevorflowers Yeah! I saw one person in the Bastard Keyboards discord did something like that. But they added little stands to their arm rests which let them adjust the spacing to make it just right. Very inspiring. Still had to run cables between them and to the computer though.
@mauve FYI, Max Veytsman — who I think you met at Causal Islands — has a kit for an ergo dox split mechanical keyboard that he's looking to get rid of if you're looking for one.