After I get a couple group builds done to get familiar with VHS, I want to make myself a nice minimalist “hacker” mechanical keyboard. Something like this:
I want a tenkeyless layout or smaller, and I plan to harvest a bunch of Cherry Black switches out of a gaming keyboard that I have. Other than that, I haven’t settled on exactly what to build, so I’m hoping you guys will direct me to your favourites. If anyone else is interested maybe we can make a couple of these together.
I built an ergodox custom mechanical keyboard last year. I’d recommend the USB Teensy as a controller - there’s lots of people using them in custom keyboards, so lots of help and example firmware out there.
Stacked acrylic frame works quite nicely, and can be made on our laser cutter.
One decision is to buy a PCB, rather than hand wire everything - massdrop’s[1] where I got the boards and key caps for the ergodox - they’ve run a few group buys for this kind of thing. Not necessary, but can make things easier and cleaner if you want to use a layout that’s already out there.
[1] - That’s a referral link. I’ve been a happy customer.
A workmate of mine built a very similar keyboard from scratch. He calls it OpenClack and released most (all?) of his design files on the GitHub linked above. I’m really not sure where it’s at now, my understanding is the prototype worked well enough and he decided not to product-ize it after sinking a lot into the development.
I can probably put you in touch if you’re interested.
Oh - I also want to do a matias/alps board at some point, and getting keycaps looks to be a tremendous pain. If anyone happens to have an old apple or SGI keyboard they’d be willing to let go for a reasonable price, please let me know.
Sorry to necro the thread @jon, but I have some spare Alps caps if you still haven’t gotten around to the next build 
They came in today. The stems are a bit long, you might need to modify the mods, but they seem to be in good shape.
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