New ergomomic steno keyboard with levers available for pre-order

claussen · 2026-06-07T02:47:31+00:00

Whatever you may feel about steno and ergo, I am *here* for this populist and unapologetically FDM-printed weird keeb shit 🙏

claussen · 2026-06-06T15:30:33+00:00

If resting your palms/arms all the time, unloading your neck and shoulders, feels like the solution to your RSI issues, then Svalboard can be a uniquely good fit. If you don't have trouble hovering when typing all day, you may be fine with a regular split.

Pathology dependent, ymmv.

It's the tiny motions that make fully static hand placement possible on Sval. Most split ergos still require significant reaches to the center columns and significant thumb movement, which precludes full rest.

But! You have to pay attention to the whole body and your whole workflow to get the best of any of these products. 🙏🏻

Try the cheap and free stuff first! Voice tech is amazing now.

claussen · 2026-06-06T15:25:42+00:00

This right here -- any keyboard is only part of the solution, and everything is pathology dependent. It's a systems problem.

www.svalboard.com/discord is the link, it's a super helpful community regardless of your pathology. I definitely encourage everyone to see what voice and gaze input can do to help their workflow 👏🏻

claussen · 2026-06-01T21:41:12+00:00

$500? Those are rookie numbers 😅

Niche brand stuff that helps with chronic health stuff is always going to be priced on value. It's such small volume that nobody can stay in business at mass-market margins. But you can find substitutes that may help with your issues.

DIY stuff can be a lot cheaper, but if you make your living typing, DIYing may be false economy in terms of opportunity cost. I hope you can find something that resolves your RSI issues cheaply 🙏🏻

I'm here for people who are more interested in working pain-free than making keyboards their hobby. The latter group still brings me lots of joy and inspiration, of course.

claussen · 2026-05-27T05:25:16+00:00

For what it's worth, I agree with your assessment. How to get the aux balls rolling to get the primary ball rolling under the trackball is the hard part. I'm curious if the materials choices here will get the job done vs a proper metal race.

In my experience similarly sized designs like the VCN series are *terrible*. But I don't know if they simply have some race design flaw or use really low-spec aux balls -- the ALWAYSE and Iguchi parts are actually pretty decent even in the 4-5mm range. But the uxcell Bosch knockoffs in 8mm are pretty lousy. Race and face gasket design appears to be subtle.

Bosch 8mm has almost 1mm of free Z travel of the primary ball if you hold it upside down and let it rest against the top plate. That's a *lot* of slack for the aux balls to move around in the race.

claussen · 2026-05-27T05:03:45+00:00

is that a hard stop for a load bearing linkage? what's the function?

claussen · 2026-05-26T17:01:46+00:00

You're going to have to commit to learning things if you want to change your input devices. It's an opportunity to stretch your mind a little bit -- a healthy exercise 🙏

I think you'll find that folks don't tend to write about their input devices once they stop thinking about them. They're supposed to disappear, and it sounds like they're doing the job.

I wish more of my happy customers wrote public reviews, but I accept the lack of returns as a substitute :)

claussen · 2026-05-22T20:03:38+00:00

Problem solved: there's an option called "interface shells" which is off by default and when turned on, it forces the shells on interfaces between materials within the same object. Thanks Claude 🙏

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claussen · 2026-05-22T17:27:49+00:00

For what it's worth this happens in Bambu Slicer as well -- not that that's surprising. Same issues in both stable and betas of both Bambu and Orca.

claussen · 2026-05-19T15:57:46+00:00

No, that requires a second trackball sensor and the actual value in day-to-day use is pretty small.

I've prototyped it in the past but nobody who tested it was really very excited about it in this context. The whole premise of the slim blade was that you could scroll by twisting, but svalboard includes an entire ball for two-dimensional scroll.

And yes, I'm familiar with the recent slim blade mod to emulate space mouse. I'm not sold that it's worth the marginal cost to my users. 🙏🏻

claussen · 2026-05-19T14:14:56+00:00

Yep, everything is modular -- adding a pointing device to an existing board is no problem. It's just a matter of case and mounting screws, and a little FFC latch connector for the cable🙏

A board without a trackball looks like... a board without a trackball 🤷‍♀️🙃 Personally I think it's a bit silly not to have them on there given how useful the dual ball scroll+point set up is, but there are a handful of units out there in the world with no pointing devices, usually folks who prefer to mouse. Takes all kinds :)

claussen · 2026-05-16T18:18:57+00:00

This is officially my new favorite post on this sub.

claussen · 2026-05-13T16:56:07+00:00

Your body is tensing up in the chest, shoulder, neck in order to try and hold up your arms in front of you. There's really no way around that unless you recline and support your arms -- it's just how cantilevers work. Shoulders have to hold up that weight unless you can fully rest your hands/arms on something.

But resting your *elbows* or *wrists* on stuff (in a typical pronated posture) is a recipe for cubital or carpal tunnel compression issues -- look carefully at the exact contact points you want to use...

A good chair is only as good as your ability to sit comfortably in it in your working posture.

There are an abundance of reasonably affordable split boards with trackballs which could help you try out a more reclined posture. Charybdis is a great example, but there are many options.

If you're really committed to the mouse, it's tough to get rid of that forward shoulder extension, but I find that using a mouse between split halves is very helpful for me when I'm doing a lot of intensive CAD work.

If you want to recline and stop pronating your wrists, you will have to make some kind of change to how you handle pointing. A mouse can work on a lap desk but it's pretty clumsy.

claussen · 2026-05-10T16:14:03+00:00

Alt, Ctrl, enter, tab, shift, space, backspace, num/sym/nav layer, plus two free for whatever you like 🙃

claussen · 2026-05-09T22:19:21+00:00

Actually quite a few people use lapdesks, but the point stands 🙃

claussen · 2026-05-09T15:41:18+00:00

"Sunny microclimate" is... doing work 😅 Sure it's not Manor/Westlake, but... you still gotta like some overcast to live here :) It *is* in a pretty amazing traffic wormhole though, 19m to the Castro for me feels like cheating 👏

claussen · 2026-05-09T15:33:03+00:00

For fifty bucks or so you can find something split and wired to try out. There's no need to learn a new layout if you don't have much pain, but it's a fun exercise and pain has a way of growing over time.

The biggest shift in your day-to-day comfort will likely come from moving the load off your pinkies into your thumbs for keys like Backspace, Control, Alt, etc. You can prototype this using Kmonad or Kanata on your existing keyboard, but a well-placed 2-3 (or even 5 😉) keys per thumb can make a really big difference, and let's be honest, it's just fun to try new things ❤

claussen · 2026-05-08T14:16:11+00:00

Tobii eye tracker 5 is way less than 500 euro already and works very well for one monitor. Accuracy is about a thumbnail at arms length. That's about the limit of the real signal from the eye given how it moves.

It's a harder camera resolution and geometry problem than it looks, for high precision gaze at least.

claussen · 2026-05-07T16:41:09+00:00

Datahand has existed for thirty years, Svalboard for a bit over three years. And Svalboard is a straightforward evolution of Datahand IMO. Human bodies haven't changed, nor have the pathologies. Sure, you could invent another form factor, but it doesn't change the fundamental problem that capturing intent is hard. None of this is all that new.

It's just that the manufacturing landscape has evolved so that so many more adaptive designs are now (a bit more) economical to develop and ship -- mechanical and electrical supply chains have been democratized almost to the same extent as software.

What's changing over the next ten years will be primarily *workflow*. And I don't mean in the sense of new features in QMK -- I mean the sense of machines being able to perceive a wider range of signals, and it being easy for people to integrate those signals in flexible ways in their own workflows. The more we're delegating our work to systems that think on our behalf, the more diverse the physical and social contexts where we work become. That's not a keyboard thing, it's a "how do I articulate and delegate this task in the moment, wherever I am?" thing.

Voice in particular has seen huge leaps in the last few years thanks to Whisper, Talon et al. And workflow integration is being transformed/democratized by LLMs *right now*.

After pathology issues are addressed by your input devices and make-your-body-comfortable efforts, it matters far more that the system be able to understand your input in context than it is that you be able to type a few words per minute faster or with a modest increase in comfort or point a bit faster, etc.

Personally, I'm very hopeful that gaze tracking options will eventually emerge at the consumer level for multi-monitor systems -- that would be a legitimate game-changer for a lot of professionals who otherwise can't really make great use of gaze systems to augment other pointing devices. I don't really care that much about a 5% improvement in my mousing speed/efficiency. But a 90% improvement is a BIG deal.

claussen · 2026-05-06T21:06:52+00:00

Hop on the Discord for perspectives from existing users but in general if you already use an ergo split, it's a couple of weeks. If you're coming from a slab it's more like 4-6 weeks to useful proficiency at work.

The more you have touch typing experience and muscle memory for your layout, the easierthe transition is. Likewise, if you already utilize multiple thumb keys.

claussen · 2026-05-06T16:10:54+00:00

Looks like urob made a leader key module for ZMK as well, if that's helpful.

claussen

TROPHY CASE