I heard that the next model would be aimed at something a little smaller for travelling? Apart from the wooden case and the fn palm button the design of the keyboard is quite compact. Has anyone removed the pcb and put it in their own housing?
In a similar line, is there the possibility to purchase an assembled keyboard without the wooden housing?
Iād be really into this. I love my keyboardio and have gotten kind of addicted to it, but the housing is heavy and not great for travel. Iāve never cracked mine open, but is there anything useful in the lower corners or is it just a pleasing shape? I donāt rest my hands while typing and it just seems bulky to me.
You mean you havenāt used the included screwdriver? 
The actual PCB isnāt much larger than the footprint of the keys themselves. Thereās some pictures on this Kickstarter update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keyboardio/the-model-01-an-heirloom-grade-keyboard-for-seriou/posts/1649803
Iād certainly be into a smaller, lighter, LED-less plastic keyboard that I can throw in my bag without worrying about destroying a piece of art (not to mention that piece of art destroying anything else in my bag) but still with some or all of the functionality of keyboardio.
Iād be into this as well. Massdrop often has interesting deals on mechanical keyboards, although most of them are a typical staggered layout. I donāt think Iāve seen them offer one thatās both ortholinear AND split, unfortunately.
I suspect the next thing we make will be a single-piece keyboard with many of the same benefits of the Model 01. My goal is something less expensive, less complex and easier to doā¦quickly.
http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/e945dc325ef376bce5873e23ffa63955 is one thing weāve been playing with.
Interesting. Thatās almost exactly the opposite of the layout that Iāve been imagining for a while. On a standard staggered QWERTY keyboard, my left arm has an easier time than my right does, despite the fact the Iām right-handed. To change rows from the home row, my right arm moves from the shoulder because the ācolumnsā are mostly in line with my forearm, but my left hand mostly changes rows by pivoting, a much lower-energy motion.
For someone who doesnāt rest his or her wrists while typing, I think it would be far superior to angle the columns the opposite way, with the rows farther from the typist shifted farther to the outside, not the inside.
Huh. Thatās really interesting and entirely unlike anything Iāve ever seen before when observing typists and studying layouts.
Interesting, have you build a prototype to test how it is to type on?
Iāve done a fair amount of observation of āproperā typing technique, as well as paying attention to my own motions. Once I understood what I was looking for, it became clear to me that, for people who donāt rest their wrists, the right arm moves in a different way than the left on a standard keyboard. If you can, just look at the elbows. When I type on a standard keyboard, my left elbow is nearly stationary except when typing T on a QWERTY keyboard, but my right elbow is constantly moving forward and backward. This is the thing I like least about the Model01; it forces me to be constantly moving both forearms in order to transition between rows. My second least favourite thing is the extent to which the columns are staggered, which is more extreme than the difference in length of my fingers in their natural relaxed positions. Iām pretty sure thatās also a difference between stationary-wrist typing and floating-wrist typing.
I have never seen an ergonomic keyboard that appears to be made for floating-wrist typing. Thatās not too surprising, though, because itās probably far more likely for typists to get RSI problems if they keep their wrists stationary, so floating-wrist typists have much less desire for ergonomic keyboards on average. Also, as the percentage of people who type frequently has gone sharply up along with personal computer usage, the percentage of typists who rest their wrists has also increased dramatically. Back when typing was done on mechanical typewriters (i.e. non-electronic, unlike the term āmechanicalā as applied to keyswitches), it was not possible to rest oneās wrists, because the force required was beyond what fingers could produce on their own ā similar to playing a piano. So, while it may be much healthier for people to type without resting their wrists, the fact is that most people do, and will continue to do so. While Iād be more excited to see someone make a keyboard with a physical layout like this one, I donāt hold out much hope that it will ever be done.
All that aside, thereās one problem I would have with the KLE layout you shared ā my right thumb, which would normally be used for the spacebar, would naturally rest between two keys on the bottom row, not on the wide āspacebarā key below N & M. Iād have to curl my thumb in to use it, and Iād always be tapping that corner of the key while typing, which I would expect to get uncomfortable pretty quickly. I think a pair of 2U keys instead of the 1U keys in the center of the bottom row would be better, and the rest of the bottom row could be filled with just 1U keys. Iād also have a strong preference for a symmetrical keyboard, either with four fewer keys on the right side or four more on the left.
I agree with you about the bottom row. Thatās very much not its final form.
Most of my prototypes were 100% symmetric. The problem with doing that -and- sticking to a standard ā60%ā size keyboard is that you lose the extra pinkie column on the right side, which leads to a much more non-standard right hand layout than Iām going forā¦
If youāre going for such a standard layout, what do you see as the advantage of this keyboard over a completely standard 60% that runs Kaleidoscope?
Also, why not preserve the symmetry by adding those extra four keys on the left side?
The point of the layout is that the left-hand stagger is a mirror of the right-hand stagger. itāll of the typist to hold their left wrist in a more neutral position that matches the right wrist. The reason not to tack on another column is to fit in a standard 60% enclosure.