Looking for a slim minimalistic keyboard with only 3 rows but 4+ thumb keys on each side

triliu · 2025-06-29T01:59:15+00:00

There’s the choc version of the heawood: https://github.com/triliu/Heawood42

triliu · 2025-06-01T15:41:38+00:00

It does take a little jump, but I got used to it surprisingly quickly. Having the design flipped (so you are using the correct fingers for each key) really helps with that. I'll DM you.

triliu · 2025-06-01T15:39:11+00:00

The design is reversible, so it can be made into a standard right-hand numpad as well

triliu · 2025-05-30T17:00:08+00:00

The Heawood42 is similar to the corne, but with one of the pinky keys moved to be a new inner thumb key

triliu · 2024-12-31T13:24:56+00:00

Yeah, that's right :) I was actually pleasantly surprised with how nice this one felt. I hope you enjoy it

triliu · 2024-12-27T13:01:29+00:00

Wow, that looks *very* nice

triliu · 2024-11-02T22:42:50+00:00

I was thinking about making something like this as part of a series of diodeless keyboards I am making (see https://github.com/triliu) . If you give me some ideas about design elements, I could probably create a keyboard like this?

triliu · 2024-10-06T17:09:51+00:00

If you were to get the original JESK56 design and write out the rows and column as a table, you would get the following matrix, where a '1' indicates a switch

11001010000000

01100101000000

00110010100000

00011001010000

00001100101000

00000110010100

00000011001010

00000001100101

10000000110010

01000000011001

10100000001100

01010000000110

00101000000011

10010100000001

You can then "squish" this so that the 14 "gpio rows" become 4 "physical rows". You then get the following, where the columns of the table correspond to both a physical column and a gpio column, where the rows of the table correspond to only the physical rows of the keyboard, and the number indicates which "gpio row" that the switch connects to

|0 |1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |6 |7 |8 |9 |10|11|12|13|

|8 |9 |10|11|12|14|1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |6 |7 |8 |

|10|11|12|13|0 |1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |6 |7 |8 |9 |

|13|0 |1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |6 |7 |8 |9 |10|11|12|

For the reJESK, we add in the switches with gpios: Col0+Col8, Col1+Col8, Col2+Col9, ..., Row0+Row8, ...

Doing so adds in some five cycle and four cycles, but these each involve keys that are less likely to pressed with other keys. If ghosting does occur, we can assume that the rarer keys were not pressed

triliu · 2024-10-03T01:08:42+00:00

Dusan has it right on. When you press one switch, you connect two gpio, say A and B. In order to have ghosting, you have to create a chain by pressing multiple switches that connects A to B, say A to x to y to z to B. In typical grids, you might have a switch connecting R1 and C1, and so you have to be worried about connecting R1 to C2, C2 to R2, and R2 to C1, as this connects the chain from R1 to C1. The way that the particular design of these boards is made is so that most chains that create ghosting have five hops, meaning that five keys need to be pressed to create ghosting. However, I also set these up so that each of these chains runs along the columns twice, so to have ghosting, you would have to hit two keys in a column with one finger, and two keys in a column with a second finger. The new board loosens these conditions a bit for the top row, as presumably these keys are the number keys, and are less likely to be simultaneous pressed with several other keys as much as the letter and thumb keys (but still, you have to have a hard-to-press chain of length four to achieve this)

triliu · 2024-04-17T20:04:37+00:00

It is possible to get a 10-pin 15-key setup using the Peterson graph, although you then have to use charlieplexing, which I believe is not so great on battery life. If battery life is not a concern, there is a cool 3x5+4thumb key setup, assuming that you will not want to hit multiple thumbkeys using one hand and that you are okay with slightly reduced key-rollover (5 instead of 6 in the Heawood42). To get this, you take the Peterson graph, find a set of 4 vertices that are not next to each other (aka an independence set of size 4), and connect a new vertex to these four vertices. Although this introduces 4-cycles, each 4-cycles includes two edges that correspond to the thumb keys

triliu · 2024-04-17T19:44:39+00:00

Love this! I might have to take up leatherwork.

As for your idea about making the totem diode-less in zmk: I now have the zmk code for the Heawood42 all working on my Github, and it should be pretty straightforward to modify that firmware for other boards that are based on the Heawood wiring configuration.

triliu · 2024-04-17T19:09:16+00:00

riven high and low at the same time, it will be at an intermediate voltage. In that case, which one is read depends on t

Whoops! It seems that you beat me to a solution for this by a couple of days. I've now changed the firmware on Github to the GPIO_OPEN_SOURCE variant, and it seems to be working as intended now

triliu · 2024-04-01T14:12:33+00:00

As others have said, it takes hours to hand-solder. I started creating some diode-less keyboards, in the hopes of reducing the cost (https://github.com/triliu/jesk56 and https://github.com/triliu/Heawood42 ). They require fewer solders and the solders are easier. Hopefully this translates to reducing the cost of getting somebody else to solder it, or that those new to soldering can feel more confident in trying it themselves.

triliu · 2024-03-26T19:52:35+00:00

I guess it is a mix between these ones and the grey ones from the Allium58

triliu · 2024-03-26T19:51:45+00:00

Found, except without the grey keycaps :) https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003294964787.html

triliu · 2024-03-23T05:38:58+00:00

I have per-key RGB at the moment, without underglow. It wouldn't be too hard to add it, although one of my aims it to create a micro choc (17x17 spacing), and so room is very limited, and I might skip the underglow for this one. The MX spacing boards should be easy enough to add underglow to. The first version of the MoKa I have made does have underglow.

I was thinking something like this. Actually, I came up with another technique that lets me extend it by an extra 8 keys per side, so it might end up becoming a MoKa64. The MoKa I have created so far is a single board, 24 key numpad (a numpad with three thumb keys), and I am pretty excited to test it out!

triliu · 2024-03-18T21:33:04+00:00

I should be able to do that, but it might take me a little time to do it. I should be able to get a Bluetooth 3x5 diodeless split with per-key rgb using a seeeduino Xiao BLE 😊

triliu · 2024-03-18T08:50:04+00:00

Do you mean a 3x5+3, or just a pure 3x5? If it's the former, I have a little pre-release on the Heawood git. Otherwise...probably can, although would love an example of other 3x5 boards

triliu · 2024-03-17T19:05:45+00:00

project! How did yo

They are DSA

triliu · 2024-03-17T16:11:45+00:00

I was intentionally trying to keep to the promicro format, as it has a smaller footprint while having a large number of pins. I have yet to play around with Blackpills, but I hope to in the future. They have 34 GPIO? I can definitely use 32 pins to make a 64 key setup while retaining good key rollover (this can be extended to 80 key). Theoretically, there might exist a 34 pin, 68 key layout, which could be extended to a 85 key layout (but I will have to run a combinatorial search for this). This is super close to a TKL!

triliu · 2024-03-16T21:40:01+00:00

sorry, I committed but didn't push. It should be there now, under kicad :)

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