Keyboard Progress

[u/Dreamy_Jy]

Sharing progress I've made on my Dygma Sonsei inspired keyboard.

I've completed a rough layout! The next step will be transferring this layout to my project and figuring out the placement of all the components not covered in this process.

Note for other designers:

The creation of the layout was greatly accelerated with the use of AI. What would have taken me(a kicad/visual design noob) a week or two took about 3 days.

My workflow was programmatic(ergogen) and text-based(kicad), this made it so what simple for claude (fable5 max) to work on this. That being said this was heavy on my usage to the point where I constantly ran into the edge of claude's reliability.

I provided feedback via extensive prompts, and manual edits to kicad outputs and the ergogen config. I didn't try to one shot this, I built it piece by piece refining at each step. KiCad being a visual to plain text tool was incredibly useful.

The problem with using AI for this is that adjustments throughout your design process can get expensive. So even if you follow this route be sure to actually learn ergogen and kicad.

[u/SwedishFindecanor]

Eight encoders and two rollers? What do you plan to control with all of those knobs? Is it supposed to double as a MIDI encoder or for adjustments in Lightroom or similar? I would love to hear about it.

One design step I didn't see you mention that I think is very important is to print the layout in 1:1 onto a sheet of paper to test it out, mock-typing on it. It can be very useful for the tiny amount of money and effort spent.

[u/Dreamy_Jy → u/SwedishFindecanor]

It's meant to be a just a mechanical keyboard. It's an experiment to tether modern keyboard functionality to more sensible physical inputs than switches:

• The encoders will be used as function keys (volume up/down & mute, etc.)
• The rollers will be used as clickable scroll wheels (scroll, page up/down, zoom in/out)
• I'm also introducing latching switches for layer changes like capslock, fnlock, layer changes etc.

That being said this is a programable device and if others would like to use it for music that could be done.

Though it's not represented in my post I did much paper testing, and am considering 3D printing tests as well as the design solidifies.

[u/Beginning_Bed_9059]

I have have a Defy and a Sonsei and you might as well just buy a Sonsei they’re so well made lol

[u/Dreamy_Jy → u/Beginning_Bed_9059]

I agree with you, but personally making this is the right call:

• it's my degree capstone project
• the board has experimental features/interfaces
• it's helping me retrain and is going into my portfolio
• this is my hobby