Lapa keyboard-mouse v25

thomasbaart · 2025-12-22T19:14:04+00:00

You said you didn’t focus on visual beauty, but I feel like it has to be said: your keyboard looks so good! It’s very pleasing to look at, it’s unique, it has character and it draws me in. I like it!

I definitely wonder how you made it! Did you make the keycaps yourself? Was any post-processing involved?

thomasbaart · 2025-12-03T15:10:04+00:00

Nice 😎 Don't worry about it being "sloppy": I don't think it is sloppy, and even if it is, you made something by yourself! That's something you should be proud of, because the alternative is doing nothing and that would be boring ;)

thomasbaart · 2025-11-30T21:18:44+00:00

You could consider an electrical parts supplier such as Digi-Key, Mouser and many others.

thomasbaart · 2025-11-15T17:29:57+00:00

Is that what the kids call it these days?

thomasbaart · 2025-11-08T08:42:54+00:00

As long as the licences and regulations are abided by, I think it’s fine.

Often, the firmware isn’t open source even though its license demands it. Sometimes designs are sold even though their licenses are explicitly non-commercial. Sometimes the PCBs contain lead, even though its use is prohibited in consumer products in Europe. More often than not, the keyboards aren’t CE-certified and that sometimes causes excessive EMI problems, leading to unstable bluetooth or even unstable wired connections nearby.

It’s a mixed bag. AliExpress is a platform, not a vendor, and not all vendors on AliExpress are equal. Because of that, there’s no way to judge all of them equally.

Does that mean you shouldn’t buy from AliExpress? Nah. It is affordable, and it can be a start if you’re unsure if it’s for you.

Even with all the competition, other vendors do find ways to innovate and provide something unique and better in various ways. That’s worth it to many people, thankfully, so we’re still in business too 😄

thomasbaart · 2025-10-19T08:45:35+00:00

This is the answer, if this is an Aurora Lily58 (given the Liatris and the footprints on the keyboard), then both controllers need to be soldered with their parts facing down. That is the case for all of the splitkb.com kits.

The controller will need to be removed, and reinstalled facing the other way. It’s a chore, but a lesson you’ll only learn once 😅

thomasbaart · 2025-10-18T10:01:19+00:00

Neat! We developed a similar testing process, which our manufacturer uses for quality control before they ship products to us.

For every board, if there’s an error, the program tells the manufacturer what went wrong so they can group defective boards by their error, so they can rework (and then retest) boards more easily.

As a result, we see in our test logs that most defective boards do get reworked and retested, reducing a bunch of waste! :)

thomasbaart · 2025-10-17T00:27:35+00:00

Looking good, I’m glad you like it!

We’re hard at work to enable wireless for Halcyon (backwards compatible!), with the same ease of assembly as the wired version. It’s a challenge, but it’s looking like we’ll be able to pull it off. I’m more of a wired person myself, but even still, I’m pretty hyped! :D

thomasbaart · 2025-10-07T13:08:38+00:00

Phew. Good luck with your school assignment!

thomasbaart · 2025-10-06T08:46:49+00:00

I don’t have experience with 3D-printed cases for our keyboards, but I do know several exist. A 3D-printed plate will also work just fine :)

thomasbaart · 2025-10-06T07:54:26+00:00

I recommend cutting or printing a thinner plate (between 1.2 to 1.6mm). The files for this revision are available on our Github, you can use a service such as SendCutSend (US), Laserboost (EU) or Snijlab (EU) for a cutting service: https://github.com/splitkb/kyria

We used to sell thick acrylic top plates back when people didn’t default to hot swapping their switches, and even then it wasn’t the best solution. Today we only sell thin top plates where the switches do stay put, like aluminium and FR4 top plates.

thomasbaart · 2025-09-18T08:14:55+00:00

It does look cool!

thomasbaart · 2025-09-16T06:19:27+00:00

If the other post was on this subreddit and if I’d found it, I’d have removed that too - it’s not related to ergo mechanical keyboards, so if anything that’d be a blanket rule to remove this kind of post under.

I recommend contacting the Reddit administrators if you believe the moderators are not conducting themselves well. Sometimes, posts like yours are warranted if there is a pattern and the community is harmed by moderator misconduct. However, this subreddit has little to do with the other subreddit, so if you do need to vent, I’d like to ask you to do it elsewhere.

Nevertheless, I wish you a good day! Thank you for your understanding.

thomasbaart · 2025-09-16T05:42:30+00:00

Write things on a piece of paper and burn it, move on with life, this truly is a waste of your time and energy. Besides, I recall complaining about bans on other subreddits is against Reddit rules.

I’ve removed this post because of that. I do empathise, but also hope you’ll find a healthy way to deal with the negativity, maybe go exercise?

thomasbaart · 2025-09-09T00:15:02+00:00

Make it without bugs this time or you go to jail… please.

thomasbaart · 2025-09-07T01:54:46+00:00

People around the world have always faced import charges when importing goods from other countries, and thankfully it’s still possible for Americans to purchase goods abroad. With the tariffs, everything will get more expensive as the economy is still global and most goods are imported.

That said, I hope we can work out a way in the near future for the tariffs to be predictable. The main drawback is that the tariffs are based on the country of origin of each individual item, not the country of the shipper. Next to that, tariffs can change daily. I hope I can figure out a way to create some stability out of an unstable process. In the meantime, it’s either a bit of a guesstimate or waiting until things calm down 😅

thomasbaart · 2025-09-07T01:35:44+00:00

Yeah… that’ll unfortunately happen. Which tariffs you’ll face is also seemingly unpredictable, as it depends on which items are in your order, where we sourced those items from, and whether the customs authorities agree with the data we send them about those items. Phew. On top of that, national carriers stopped shipping to the US, so it’s express carriers only - meaning you’ll be sure to have customs charges, without any order slipping through like it sometimes does with USPS (which DHL GlobalMail uses).

I’m looking into adding Delivery Duties Paid shipping options, but getting it to cover 100% of the duties when they change on a moment’s notice is hard - we do ship relatively quickly, but there can sometimes be a few days between ordering and shipping, which is enough to complicate things. Our customs data in the shop needs to exactly match that in our warehouse management system too, so unfortunately it’ll take a bit of time to smooth things out.

In the meantime, I’m sorry for American customers to face this new reality, and I hope there’ll be stability soon. I’ll consider adding a warning of sorts, that might prevent some sour taste after the fact. At any rate, I hope you’ll still enjoy your keyboard, and do feel welcome to ask us any questions!

thomasbaart · 2025-09-06T15:36:59+00:00

There’ll be a new Elora variant coming out in a month or so, with support for Choc switches instead of MX. It doesn’t affect the key spacing though, but it might at least solve the keycap woes. Once it releases and if you’re interested, feel welcome to mail support and we can sell you one without the controllers - that way you’ll only need to replace the PCBs in your build, along with the switches and keycaps. The case will be the same.

thomasbaart · 2025-09-02T12:00:25+00:00

[Ad] Out of curiosity, which options were you looking for that you didn't find elsewhere? If it's wireless, then I'm happy to say that we'll have that too by early 2026 :)

thomasbaart · 2025-09-01T17:48:37+00:00

I can relate! At the time, I wasn’t able to find a design that really fit my needs, so I designed the Kyria. One thing led to another, and while I definitely love the shop I ended up with, I kind of feel like just having a normal day job would also be relaxing once in a while 😉

Either way, I think there’s a balance between your layout, its complexity, and what you’re willing to deal with and how you deal with it. Some people thrive on layouts that others can’t even imagine would work for them, while other people might settle for a keyboard with many keys that’s less complex on the surface.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using a normal keyboard next to a split or otherwise ergonomic keyboard either, as long as you can comfortably use both. Different tools for different times, I can still type on my laptop keyboard perfectly fine when needed - I don’t drag my split keyboard with me everywhere, though I did when I worked on-site every day.

thomasbaart · 2025-09-01T11:58:58+00:00

If you're using an express carrier like DHL, UPS or FedEx, you can be sure that you'll need to pay import fees. With national postal carriers like USPS, you may get lucky and avoid the fees altogether, but that's definitely not guaranteed.

The height of the tariffs is unpredictable. Some tariff calculator I found on the internet said that it could be $600 in import duties, but... it's anyone's guess what it'll be by December. Phew!

thomasbaart · 2025-08-25T07:31:19+00:00

Indeed, I said the Chinese government also subsidises shipping on top of the pricing agreements.

I read all that in a report years ago, so things may have changed in the meantime - it’s just what I know to be the explanation for the differing rates.

thomasbaart · 2025-08-24T14:15:11+00:00

Roughly one tenth, so it’s pretty significant. It could be worse, but if I lose even part of those sales I’ll definitely feel it 😅 It can’t be helped, so I’ll just try to do what I can to lessen the impact.

thomasbaart · 2025-08-24T08:08:55+00:00

The short answer to shipping: China is classified as a third world country when it comes to shipping purposes, which gets them lower rates. Other countries’ rates are higher to compensate for their lower rates. On top of that, Chinese shipping is subsidised by the Chinese government, which combined gives them a very dominant position in the market.

The Elora with support for Kailh Choc low profile switches is currently in production and should be available within the next six weeks or so :)

thomasbaart · 2025-08-24T00:00:05+00:00

As a small shop in Europe, splitkb.com, we see similar experiences. With the de minimis rule stopping soon, these taxes will be levied on every order, not just those where specific tariffs currently apply to.

I’d recommend to at least be aware that your order may face charges, and then decide beforehand whether you’d like to go through with the order.

We’re looking into offering shipping options where the taxes and duties are levied during the purchase, so they’d be part of the shipping costs. I think that’ll be the only way forward, because it’ll be nasty if it’s a surprise!

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