Oh yeah it’s highly personal. For me I had really serious RSI problems. Luckily this made it go away!

I might need you to say more. What do you mean?

Take!

Here ya go

Just a heads up, it’s a “cutting mat” not a desk mat, so it’s not soft. It’s a plastic-y material

Keyboard that doesn’t make your hands/arms hurt

I tried to make a video last night for somebody else who asked but unfortunately I don’t have a tripod and it’s actually really difficult to get an angle where you can actually see how the thumbs use the joystick :/

Well I’m definitely not the first person to use the 5-way switches but I think(?) I might be the first person to use them in this way so that thumb can operate them more ergonomically. Glad you like it, you should try it out! Very fun and intuitive to use

He’s a surly little guy

Hell yeah

yeah it's this one. I bought it bc I thought it was one of those soft desk mats - it is not. lol

It's a "self-healing" cutting mat, which I was unfamiliar with. It's feels sort of like a PVC material.

it's amazing what debilitating RSI will drive one to do

I think even he has backed off that one lol

If you're asking how the 5-way switch joysticks are added, each direction just acts like a normal keyswitch, so they are just wired into the regular key matrix as if it were 5 regular keys (this is a hand-wired build , no PCB). The are mainly used for Modifier keys and Layer keys (switching to the number layer, etc)

Here is a guide to the key layout and layers

https://imgur.com/a/CRcHTBl

Well I already was a Colemak-DH user, and the layout is very loosely based on that. So that helped. Plus, I find that once you learn one alternate layout, it's a lot easier to learn another. YMMV!

But I highly suggest doing it. One thing haven't really mentioned is how this board made my RSI (a serious issue for me) completely disappear. So it's worth is for that alone imo

If you do pursue it please lmk know how it goes! Join us on r/ergomechkeyboards and tag me when you post ur build :)

you can do it, new year new you

I'd say it took me about a month to become efficient, and about two months to surpass my typing speeds with old boards. At this point my avg speed is now higher that my previous all-time highs.

And yeah, I think the github should have basically all the info you need to get started! If you look up "Ben Vallack Too Many Keys" on youtube, you will find a solid intro to the topic of boards with very few keys like this and how they work - he makes really solid content

which part

I'm an r/ergomechkeyboards cretin, and I posted this over there a couple days ago, if not allowed here please remove! Thought some people here might be interested tho

"After a few months of use, I'm happy to introduce the Fulcrum Keyboard - a 20-key ergo-mechanical split keyboard, with two rotary encoders, and two 5-way switches. It runs on KMK.

The sideways-mounted 5-way switches are such a game changer. It's like adding a force-multiplier to your board.

Our thumbs aren't the same as our other fingers (they are “opposable”, after all) so it makes sense that we shouldn’t give them same type of keys as our other fingers.

If you think about how you type on a iPhone keyboard (which most people can do quite well), this joystick mimics a similar type of movement. Our thumbs are very dexterous in this dimension.

The 5-way joystick, plus the regular key switch placed directly below it, puts six (SIX!) different actions at the tip of each thumb, all with minimal movement. Crucially, all of these actions are easily and comfortably paired with other key presses elsewhere on the keyboard.

Previously I had thought of this board as a fun, almost gimmicky side project. Now it's been my daily driver for about three months, and I can regularly type faster than what my all-time high speeds were with my other boards."

​

Other Fulcrum Features, including stuff r/mk might be interested in:

• All non-thumb keys are MX-style switches (Momoka Frog)
• Thumb switches are low-profile Red Chocs (bc your thumbs sits lower)
• Key caps are XDA, except thumb keys which are custom designs that I 3d printed for max comfort (my models are on the github, but I think they were originally remixed from here
• Two rotary encoders: tilted for ergo reachability
• Word keys: "the" & "and" each have their own key in this layout. I could take or leave the "and" key, but I don't think I'll ever type again without a "the" key

​

Keymaps/photos/info/etc on the github repo if anybody is interested. Hope you like!

Reddit post: “new study says if you were hospitalized with Covid-19, you had an 11% increase in ur chance of being diagnosed with schizophrenia (for example: from ~0.32% to ~0.35%)

Reddit comments: “yeah my whole family caught mild cases of Covid and now we have all been diagnosed with schizophrenia”