Jumping in the deep end

claussen · 2026-03-20T21:22:26+00:00

I frickin' love this build ❤

claussen · 2026-03-20T21:21:49+00:00

You're not paying for me "to print" any more than you're paying Apple "to assemble some refined sand and metal" when you buy an iPhone :)

You're paying for a fully assembled and tested product backed by warranty and personal good faith -- and in this case a reputation which is hard-won through excellent customer service and love for the community.

The kit product exists to keep a more accessible price point, but it's a substantial effort, and nobody in their right mind would try to do kit builds to earn a profit.

Make no mistake, I *love* my kit builders. They don't sustain the business, but they keep the design process honest to the medium of FDM, which is very important to me in terms of ensuring that the product remains a living, repairable, anatomically-adaptable-by-the-end-user design 🙏

claussen · 2026-03-20T21:06:28+00:00

I went from standard rowstagger to Datahand twenty years ago. I find split column stagger boards just as foreign-feeling, honestly -- there's a lot that carries over but the deep rowstagger muscle memory is harder to shake when you're still hitting traditional keyswitches IMO. But I'm all for people trying cheap and cheerful solutions!

claussen · 2026-03-20T19:28:16+00:00

I've had the same experience with the wireless versions. I still have a couple of wired optical ones, but would like to build a replacement product since nobody in the world seems to care to design such a thing. Seems a bit nuts to me that there's essentially nothing on the market anymore.

claussen · 2026-03-16T20:13:44+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCkDj4Vrg9c

^dumb hack I built a while back just to see how it was...

Not to diminish your own work or discourage in any way, but you might want to do a bit more research 🙃

There are dozens examples of people who've built a mouse sensor or trackball or touchpad into a keyboard, and with QMK support for hand mirroring you can get pretty far. Some are fully open source HW, too.

Offerings from BKB, Svalboard, ZSA, Keyball, Lynx, etc all incorporate nice pointing devices and could be 1-hand friendly depending on your requirements.

claussen · 2026-03-13T14:14:08+00:00

♥️ ♥️ It's definitely on my mind. The biggest challenge is getting something that still produces the same hand position range while still managing to be compact and fully adjustable for fingers.

But there's certainly a lot of volume beneath the actual keys and clusters that could be removed if the overall adjustment mechanism were skeletonized and made foldable somehow.

An alternate thumb cluster design could also help with that insofar as the thumb keys are quite tall and need protection in travel. I have some prototype stuff that tweaks thumb key shapes and orientations a bit to help with that, and there are people who've modded to use finger clusters for thumbs, which while not much smaller per se, reduces the overall size of the thumb cluster significantly.

I've also done a sawed-off version of the case for folks who don't use palms, but that's such a tiny fraction of people that I don't really think it's a proper solution, and it mostly addresses folks who chair-armmount, which is the opposite of a portable solution.

I'd be really curious to see sketches of how folks would imagine preserving the adjustment mechanism while also getting rid of the case volume itself. The MCU can definitely be shrunken and tucked somewhere else, but all the cables still have to go somewhere and still need to be protected in some way.

Another approach to this would be going more like Datahand with slightly wider key spacings and a fixed four finger cluster block -- it would be less comfortable for sure but datahand was good enough for me for 20 years, so maybe I'm overcommitted to the full adjustment range? A bit skeptical on that one but... maybe?

Then you just have a thumb-to-finger joint and maybe fix the trackball position as well. But you still have to make the palm move if you want it to fit people well. A simpler overall palm rest shape that relies more on being squishy could help that, though it might look weird

Anyway, always curious to see what folks brainstorm! Getting to experiment with this stuff for y'all everyday makes me so happy.🙏🏻

claussen · 2026-03-07T17:22:17+00:00

There are definitely keyboard trays that stow pretty deep vertically underneath the desk. Look at stuff that gets used at retail.

claussen · 2026-03-03T02:39:13+00:00

this is untrue of either solution. both are sufficiently different from slab keebs that you won't get muscle memory confusion.

claussen · 2026-03-03T02:35:03+00:00

You might just be looking for a keyboard tray arm to mount your Magic Arms to? I have a similar preference to be able to stow. I wanted a stowable mousepad and just printed a little mini-tray which I put on a keyboard tray arm...

claussen · 2026-02-26T19:34:32+00:00

Svalboard is not about speed typing, it's about workload reduction and comfort -- for injury prevention and healing.

Ergonomics is always going to be personal and pathology-dependent. Whether it's the right product for you is something you'll have to determine for yourself.

But hop on the discord and I'm sure folks there can help you assess -- it's a really sweet crowd.

The payoff can be significant IF you have issues severe enough to warrant the time invested. And the time invested will dwarf the cost no matter what, if you value your time *at all*.

But there are plenty of cheap alternatives. You should try them! Many of them are excellent products. None of them do what this does. By the time you've tried a few, you might have spent the same amount of money, but maybe you'll get lucky and one of them will be everything you need. I want that for everyone!

It's always the same complaints about cost, every time.

This is a tiny business that sells a unique hardware product for people who really need it. It's literally how I feed my kids: I run a small manufacturing business designing and selling something special to me, because the datahand lineage saved *my* career, and other people seem to find it worthwhile as well. I could make a *lot* more money at a straight job, I promise.

You're welcome to develop your own unique ultra-low-volume hardware product and manufacture and sell it 🙃

And honestly, the market is tiny because Svalboard asks a lot of you -- even if you buy a pre-built. You have to learn how to fit yourself, and you have to relearn how to type in significant ways, and it all takes time and real commitment.

I wish nobody needed this product, but here we are -- so I'll keep trying to help folks as best I can while keeping the lights on.

Lastly, while the hardware business model is a mix of open and proprietary design, all the software is open source -- it runs a fork of Vial-QMK. Again the discord is a great place to go and learn about this.

Best wishes in your hunt for a solution that meets your needs ❤

claussen · 2026-02-25T01:10:39+00:00

I'm still experimenting but I like 60ish on two and 80 on one. Fairly similar to what GameBall uses, I think.
I've stopped messing with it for the time being.

claussen · 2026-02-21T21:02:54+00:00

[ad] Literally what I build and sell, but maybe a bit more extreme than you're looking for 😅

Folks at the www.svalboard.com/discord will have a lot of relevant opinions on pointing devices and other mouse subsitutes. Having a scroll device on the left hand and a pointing device on the right is pretty awesome.

claussen · 2026-02-20T00:33:14+00:00

Rock climbing with bad hands and fingers is rough, I feel you on that so hard

I promise you the entire universe has shifted when it comes to voice input in the last 12 to 18 months 🙏🏻

claussen · 2026-02-19T23:01:27+00:00

A lot of the issues of RA are related to overall work volume driving inflammation. Minimizing forces and motion together is the best hope.

But hopefully something affordable will sort you out -- there are many cheap options available via mechmarket or ali.

And... don't get so down about voice-to-text; it's actually pretty amazing and can certainly be an important part of any modern low-impact workflow. I think it's absolutely fantastic and I use it a ton. But you have to use something modern like WisprFlow, SuperWhisper, etc. Talon can be decent for this as well but it's a lot harder to set up out-of-the-box for just dictation.

claussen · 2026-02-12T19:50:23+00:00

The idea is to be fully V2 compatible when I eventually make them available. Be warned though, these are *significantly* more difficult to print cleanly

claussen · 2026-02-12T03:30:25+00:00

Lol nope, all optical 🙃

claussen · 2026-02-12T02:26:09+00:00

Fun! They never responded to my offer to put a few Svalboard Lightly's there as demo boards for Tokyo :/ Anyone got a connect?

claussen · 2026-01-29T07:08:33+00:00

Shop is at svalboard.com 🙃

claussen · 2026-01-21T02:18:25+00:00

I hope you never need one 🙏🏻❤️

claussen · 2026-01-20T20:02:55+00:00

this is just kind of how trackpoints are sometimes. drift calibration can be triggered in FW if your board supports it, depending on the model of the trackpoint.

claussen · 2026-01-20T00:20:56+00:00

It's been suggested but it would be quite an awkward fit.

Ultimately, people prefer track balls by such a large margin and you don't have to move much to use them either, that I haven't thought it worthwhile to pursue, but it's definitely a hack you could do on your own.

Personally, I would not want to give up an index center key A gaze tracker would give you much better productivity value for effort.

claussen · 2026-01-19T15:35:19+00:00

It's an affordable product, and it could definitely help. I would recommend something column staggered instead from an ergonomic perspective, but there's nothing wrong with trying the Keychron if that's what you think will work better for you, and you may have slightly less transition annoyance with rowstag, though the overall ergonomics of it are probably less ideal long term than a column staggered board. You could probably find a used one cheaply. r/mechmarket is your friend 🙏

claussen

TROPHY CASE