What is SpaceFN and why you should give it a try
The SpaceFN concept - setting up your space key as a layer switch when held - is probably one of the most useful tweaks in the keyboard hobby. Let me explain how it works. My SpaceFN article on kbd.news made some rounds recently - quite surprisingly given the age of this concept. This piece you're reading is a condensed version of the full post. If you're left with unanswered questions, you'll most likely find the info you're looking for in the original write-up. On my imaginary top list of the most useful keyboard features, tweaks and hacks, SpaceFN would deserve a podium finish for sure. But what makes it so special? In short: SpaceFN is easy to implement, easy to learn, costs nothing, can be used with any keyboard, and can improve your productivity instantly. I will list its benefits below, but can state right at this point that the SpaceFN concept, setting up your space key as a layer switch when held, is clearly one of the most useful tweaks in the keyboard hobby....
Apr 30, 2024
Edit: Ok, it was an issue that support helped me with. I am now able to access the configurator :)
I thing some of us are taken to different servers, and Massdrop is testing a new version of the website, so for some people it is the old website, for others it is the new one. Anyway specifying www1 seems to work.
Unfortunately, if you leave the page and return it may not work again. In that case, you will need to log out and repeat the process.
I think you mean "should not have prevented the software being released", and I agree. Having multiple unrelated delays really contributes to the sense of this being amateur hour and the organizers not having a clue. The excuses that have been made for that really don't wash. Apart from anything else, it's bloody arrogant - guys, we have purchased a product from you, and the software is part of that product. If you can't provide the purchased product, you should at least do your best - that means providing us with the product as soon as possible, and since there is two main parts of the product (hardware and software) each should be provided as soon as it can be. I should have had the software in mid-June, with the hardware. Oh, you've had a hardware issue? I should have had the software in mid-June, regardless.
At least then we'd have something to play with; at least then we could start sorting out the configuration for our keyboards while we wait.
Dear Developers,
"We can't provide software because hardware might change and break your stuff" Oh? Do you yourselves not have software worked out which would be broken if the hardware changed? Never mind that, actually - if you, the project architects, cannot know yet whether the hardware will change in substantial, material fashion then you are incompetent and should not be designing anything more important than a finger painting in the Special Care Center.
"We aren't releasing anything at all until it ships" It costs you nothing to give your customers an idea of where the project is at. It costs you nothing to provide regular, timely updates to the people you have so comprehensively failed. This is the age of GitHub, where the entire IT industry has learned to work with the entire world looking over their shoulder. If you can't cope with the stress of being supervised, you're incompetent to be running major projects such as this - or if it's less "I can't" and more "I won't" then you're an arrogant git who certainly doesn't deserve a cent of my money. In all honesty, if the real ship date had been made clear to me originally then I would have shipped a bag of Matias Quiet-Click switches to Maltron and told them to use them in a keyboard. It's another $500 or something, but easily twice as good a keyboard - and it would have been faster - and I'd get a product, not a project.
I really feel as though Input Club have the attitude that we are their fans, who have been pestering them unreasonably. No. In every detail, no. We are not their fans (can you tell that I'm no fan of theirs, at this point?) and in fact we are their customers. Since we are, as a group, their only customers - or close enough to make no difference - we are in fact their indirect employer. And we have not been pestering them unreasonably; we have been reminding them that they are overdue to complete the work that we hired them to complete. They need to provide us with both the hardware we paid them to produce and the software we paid them to write. I would hear about it from my customers if I was six weeks behind schedule on a project. Better believe it. And whatever job you might have, I'll be fascinated to hear it if your boss wouldn't have anything to say about you being six weeks behind on a task.
I'm not going to cancel my order. Sounds like they will actually make a late-August date. But I'm just about done with Massdrop - the only good thing they ever did for me is send me a pen for free after they messed up, and they sent it to the wrong address resulting in me getting nothing at all. Kind of symbolises the entire experience, really - they try, but then they fail. But it's not the good-natured screwups that piss me off. It's the lazy developers who refuse to release firmware because they don't feel they have any obligation to the people who pay them. It's the morons in comment threads who derisively attack products they can't afford. It's the way MD ignores questions, unless they're asked somewhere public. And it's the way that, time and time again, I find I've paid $25 shipping to have two pairs of socks wrapped in 10 plastic air bags like they're a goddamn CPU and placed in a box that's nearly a foot long and half that in width and height. Massdrop would put a damn rock in 10 plastic bags, to protect it, and then they'd ship it to the wrong damn address.
My profile page says I've "helped the community save" (sigh) $78,000 over 104 drops. So maybe someone will pay attention when I say that I'm just about done. When a product team insults Massdrop's customers - and yes, we are being insulted when Input Club just plain refuse to provide the firmware that we paid them to produce - and Massdrop say nothing about it, I'm just about f**king done.
1) Software *shouldn't* be released until hardware is finalized. Waiting until it ships is totally reasonable. 2) Given your broad, arrogant and condescending statements of how development shops *should* run leads me to believe you have no idea the workload that goes into writing custom software to run on multiple forms of hardware (ErgoDox, Infinity Dox, Infinity 60%). 3) You want a product not a project? Don't pay for a DIY keyboard kit then. The description states this is a kit (a project) and that the Infinity guys took this over from the original creator of ErgoDox. For me it was obvious that this was a learning process, the same way the Infinity 60% has been. 4) Are you paying the developers? I wasn't aware we were paying for anything other than hardware. I assumed initially the software was a bonus. 5) Sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to bitch and complain and belittle everyone involved, but not put your money where your mouth is. You want to change the system or how this works? Vote with your wallet. 6) You complain about "morons in comment threads who derisively attack products"...I'll just let that one sink in. 7) Please just be done.
As far as source code, it's been available since day one. Not necessarily complete but it has been available on github the whole time https://github.com/kiibohd/controller (specifically the connect branch). The Massdrop configurator caused use a multitude of issues (people, not engineering issues) to the point that I had to commission matt3o to design a generic configurator for the Infinity 60% (https://github.com/kiibohd/KiiConf) http://input.club/configurator. We haven't added the specific layout for the Infinity Ergodox yet, but that will be added by the time the keyboard ships.
"3) You want a product not a project? Don't pay for a DIY keyboard kit then." A DIY kit can be a product, we have some of them available in the supermarkets in my country. What means @yiri, and I am pretty sure you know it too, is that this is not a "massdrop" order but a kickstarter founding. And this is the main issue of this drop. There is even a kind of lie about that, because at the begining of this drop there wasn't any clear informations about that.
"4) Are you paying the developers? I wasn't aware we were paying for anything other than hardware. I assumed initially the software was a bonus." I am curious how you would like to use this keyboard without the relevant software. Since the begining it's for me clear that this product include an hardware part and a software part. The software is not a bonus. So yes, since our money pay people involved in this project, we are paying developers.