Keyboards are Annoying (WiP)
A constant annoyance for me during lengthy CAD sections is the positioning of the numpad on most keyboards. I have set up all of my hotkeys in CAD so they are reachable with my left hand, that way I can keep my right hand on my mouse as much as possible (I have enter and backspace bound to my mouse). However, when I want to enter a number, I have to take my right hand off my mouse anyway, either to use the right-handed numpad, or to input decimals / operators if I don’t have a numpad at all. I could simply purchase a separate left-handed numpad—or a southpaw keyboard for that matter—but that’s boring, and I have some fairly specific requirements for my perfect keyboard.
Features
I wanted this keyboard to be:
Lightweight, low-profile, and durable — it’s going to be thrown into my backpack multiple times a day, not just sitting on a desk
Modular — sometimes I want a numpad on one side, sometimes on the other, sometimes not at all, and sometimes I want a numpad and a macropad — point is, the keyboard can support two independent 5x4 switch arrays on both sides at once.
Aesthetic — I haven’t really designed something that I intend to carry around with me everywhere before, but I do have a particular design language / style that permeates my work, and this should be a strong example of whatever that style is.
Quiet — The entire library shouldn’t be alerted to my position when I type on this thing.
Learning
While this project does lean more into product design than experimental design for the purpose of learning, I was still targeting several areas where I felt I could learn a lot from this project.
PCB Design — This is by far the most complicated electrical design project I have attempted
Industrial Design — Working in the space industry teaches you a very functional design approach. I wanted to balance that out with something I could have a bit of fun with.
Product Design — My previous projects I never really finish, as the amount you learn tends to taper off pretty quickly once things start actually working. I wanted this to be a bit of a smaller scale project where I could chase down every detail to the point where I would be confident putting one of these keyboards into someone else’s hands.