The Helicoprion Keyboard is a 44-key diodeless, flippable, choc spaced, hotswap, aggressive column staggered, split keyboard powered by Pro Micro pin compatible board, eg a nice!nano or a KB2040. It does not have battery support, but you can use a nice!nano wired if you want.
I made this after having build and attempted to use a sweep. Tha lack of dedicated modifier keys kept being a problem for me. The normal tucky thumb keys are hard to reach for me so I came up with this that I think feels better. I don't expect this to by my last iteration on a keyboard so it is made to allow me to recycle the MCU and the switches in a next iteration.
If you want to see if this is right for you you can start with printing a paper tester (TODO). If you have access to a 3d-printer you can print the step file(TODO) from the repo and add you switches, this should give you a better indication on if it is right.
- Sweep The main inspiration is from the ferris sweep I started trying to used I needed more keys.
- Hillside The very pretty promicro foot print and how to wire it.
- Torn For not be afraid of showing the components and that it can look very nice.
- Pro Micro MCU - Many options
- Sweep inspired layout - Ergonomic strong column staggering for short pinkies.
- Flippable PCBs - Cheaper to order the PCBs
- Hotswap low profile choc switches - Experiment with different key switches with the hotswap sockets.
- Very large thumb cluster - Let your thumb do more of the work.
- Both SMD and THT diodes - Pick if you want the easier to solder or the smaller diodes.
| Quantity | Item |
|---|---|
| 2 | Helicoprion PCB |
| 2 | Pro Micro pin compatable comtrollers |
| 44 | Kailh choc v1 PG1350 switches |
| 44 | Choc v1 keycaps |
| 44 | Kahli hotswap sockets for choc v1 PG1350 |
| 44 | Diodes both through-hole (eg. 1N4148) and smd (SOD-123) are supported |
| 2 | TRRS jack PJ-320A (not needed for nice!nano) |
| 1 | 3.5mm TRRS cable (not needed for nice!nano) |
| 4 | Pin headers (20 pin) or sockets |
| 2 | Reset Button (optional) ALPS SKHLLCA010 or footprint compatible |
- sw9 connect pin 1 (square) to MCU pin 20 (row1)
- sw10 connect pin 1 (square) to MCU pin 19 (row2)
- MCU pin 10 to (col3) to MCU pin 10 (col3). The inner most pin is connected the outer most is not and need to be if you are using it.
External symbols and footprints are not covered by the LICENSE in this repo.
- Keebio-Parts.pretty is licensed under the MIT License.
- keyswitches.pretty is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
- Hillside is licensed under the MIT License.