Support for Alternative Layouts
This is a summary of how alternative layouts have been supported by kits such as Colevrak and Homing. It is not a discussion of alt layout performance and development, but if that interests you I highly recommend starting with Pascal Getreuer’s A guide to alt keyboard layouts (why, how, which one?). It’s a concise and comprehensive overview with links to some great sites that go deeper. He also has a separate Links about keyboards page. The Keyboard layouts doc he recommends explains layout goals and metrics in detail, summarizing the alt layouts discussed here as well as more than one hundred others. Sculpted-profile The majority of custom keycap sets are sculpted-profile (Cherry, SA, MT3, KAT, etc. - more on profiles generally here) so let’s start there. Because each row has a unique keycap shape, alt layouts require a unique keycap for each legend that moves off its QWERTY row. At first there were two The Dvorak layout was patented in 1936 by August Dvorak & William L....
Apr 23, 2024
Stabilizers: Here’s a quick demo we recorded to compare the noise levels: http://bit.ly/2FEBceI
Reliability: When you’re making 3000 custom keyboards, you discover problems. Adhesives fail when they aren't applied in the same conditions, keycap sorting doesn’t scale linearly. We removed adhesives on our magnetic parts, instead opting for countersunk magnets (magnets secured with screws rather than adhesive). Sorting keycaps for thousands of keyboards also resulted in errors. We've made improvements to our partner’s sorting process and anticipate a 95%+ reduction in sorting errors.
Firmware/Software: This encompasses the firmware on the keyboard (the software controlling the LEDs, and routing all the signals to your computer) and the software used to configure the keyboard. Historically, software for custom keyboards has been messy. It’s easy to buy three custom keyboards and have to learn three different firmware systems and configurators. Further, for most keyboard designers, firmware and configuration is an afterthought relative to the industrial design so often the solutions lack long-term support. Finally, it’s easy for a community firmware designer to add features that record inputs or execute other shady functions without oversight.
At the start of the CTRL project, we knew we needed to establish a system of software + electrical engineering that would allow for reliable and easy use of this keyboard. Originally our plan was to create a new firmware system for Massdrop keyboards, but in our research we found the QMK project, the firmware system created by an all-star team of Mech Keys Community contributors. QMK had most of the features we needed, but not everything - it lacked support for the MCU (CPU of the keyboard) and LED controllers we needed to use, it lacked support for USB Hub functionality, and it didn’t have a robust configurator front-end to support a TKL layout.
To solve these problems, Massdrop has invested in engineering resources to add support for all of this to the QMK firmware, and to build a configurator on Massdrop which will support CTRL, and eventually all popular QMK keyboards. We will be committing our work to the open source QMK project, making it possible for any community designer to utilize our system of electrical engineering (readily available and highly capable MCU + readily available and highly capable LED controller + QMK firmware + MD configurator) as the back-end of their keyboard project. Does Massdrop make money here? No, it cost us ~$50,000 to build this system, which I believe is one of the larger (if not largest) contributions a company has made to a project in the mech keys community and we are not looking at firmware/configurator licensing as a source of profit. With this system, every Massdrop custom keyboard (and hopefully others as the QMK firmware continues to grow in popularity) you purchase going forward will be configurable in one place, allowing you to save layouts to your Massdrop account and create links for sharing that don't require a Massdrop account to use.
Here’s a quick look at our alpha-state configurator: http://recordit.co/3m6Dy5LjUb
For community members, this simplifies the experience of owning a custom keyboard, for community designers, this solves the hardest parts of your technical back end. This solution for designers means more projects will make the leap from concept to production, increasing the diversity of designs available to the community at large.
Overall, we’re very excited to launch CTRL. It marks the start of a series of keyboard releases we have planned over the course of 2018, it marks a big contribution to the mech keys community, and it marks the start of a new stage in community keyboard design process.
Thanks for your interest and support, none of this would be possible without you and the continued support of the mech keys community at large. Last, a few administrative notes on this drop:
The drop is set to end on Mar 31st at 10pm so we can lock in the production for this keyboard, but depending on the success of the first drop we may re-open for a limited time in April.
Is it purely the tension holding the pins? is there a plate that mounts over the socketed switches and holds them in place?
I did see it has something called a switch plate, but I'm not entirely clear on exactly what that is.
If someone in the community wants to add support for those MCUs and LED controllers to QMK, our configurator would be able to support the K-Type, but not by default.
Hopefully somebody makes that happen, but it doesn't seem super likely.
If the K-Type is a dead project at least add QMK support to it.
Also you forgot to mention that the K-Type had problems with drawing too much current when the LEDs were set in certain ways, like fully lit white. Hope that you fixed that and properly limited the current draw of the LEDs.
I would be super interested in something like this, but more along the lines of the Z-88 (87 key?) layout... That particular keyboard (e-element z-88?) also includes hot swap switched, removable cable and RGB at around $45 (w/ prime on amazon). Not for everyone, may not itch the TKL layout scratch for all, but I would be willing to drop some additional $$ if MD where to make something like that, but with the side/ground lights and more switch options... and not $200 x.x
Where the CTRL will least be made from higher quality parts and use genuine switches most likely have a bit higher quality to it overall.
I encourage you to invest some serious effort in this design to make the keyboard less susceptible to ESD problems. I had 2 K-types fail and I think they were both because of ESD shocks. But I like the K-type so much that I'm using my third one.
Is there any chance that the new PCB would fit in the K-type aluminum frame? If yes, would you consider selling a bare PCB as an upgrade option for us K-type owners?
You mention "marks the start of a series of keyboard releases we have planned over the course of 2018". Can you please provide more details on what you have in mind? If this was the only keyboard you were going to do, I'd buy it for sure. But I already have a TKL with my K-type, and I worry that I might prefer one of the later keyboard releases, so your comment makes me hesitate about buying. I'd rather have a TKL and something else, than two TKLs.
I am excited about the software work you are doing. The K-type software was great for customizing keys, but customizing the LEDs was a bit difficult.
I'm confused about the "RGB" listed in two of the keyswitch options. I think that the RGB LEDs are standard, but the way the Cherry switches are listed makes me worry that RGB LEDs only come with the +$25 keyswitch option.
You're getting your money's worth here. This board is a steal, as was the K-Type. And comparing it to some OTS Chinese retail board (which is what @KM1337 was doing) is flipping HILARIOUS.
There are more than just Kailh switches in the drop, by the way.
Quality is a thing, and that's why I would much rather have a higher quality collaborative build vs the 'OTS Chinese retail board', hence my comment/suggestion/request. :)
Not everyone is here to troll lol.
I only do that sometimes.
It's by the community, though.
> No, it cost us ~$50,000 to build this system, which I believe is one of the larger (if not largest) contributions a company has made to a project in the mech keys community and we are not looking at firmware/configurator licensing as a source of profit.
QMK is GPLv2 software and IANAL, but I do work in software, but pretty certain any modifications you made would have to be released alongside this product, https://choosealicense.com/licenses/gpl-2.0/
Additionally, the configurator appears to have been forked from a community derived one not a fully custom built solution that itself has an ISC license, https://choosealicense.com/licenses/isc/, which to me basically means that someone could bring those modifications into another project itself unless you architected a solution to isolate custom Massdrop features from the current set of features and license those files differently.
TLDR; QMK changes would have to be released. Configurator changes to the original code would be forkable. IANAL applies.
During winter months (I think because of lower humidity) ESD discharges seem to happen more often. I've felt ESD shocks on all 3 K-types when I walked up to my desk and first touched the keyboard. Sometimes this did nothing, sometimes it caused the keyboard to reboot itself, sometimes I had to manually power cycle the keyboard to get it to work, and I think (but can't be 100% sure) that this is what caused the first two keyboards to fail.
I've experienced the same ESD shock events with my MacBook too, but it never had a problem dealing with the shock. I have experience in the consumer electronics industry, so I can tell you from personal knowledge all products have to be designed to deal with ESD shocks. There are specific things that you need to do in the design to help protect the product, and there are specific tests that you can do during prototyping to find out if your design is good enough. Of course my MacBook went through all of this so it will be very robust to ESD, but the K-type I'm not so sure.
It is clearly stated that they will give back to the QMK project and the community all the changes they make.
Beta Testers implies something completely different, and incorrect.
The entire thing is phrased in a way that confuses anyone unfamiliar with open source licenses to think Massdrop has spent all this money and will now graciously give it away when GPL requires that they do this very action. The spirit of open source is that they did all this work and because of the GPL will have to give it back to the same community that helped make their product better by giving them a place to jumpstart this product's firmware.
In other words, they can't take GPLv2 code, release a product built on it without also releasing the code back to the public. Their phrasing makes it seem like they are doing the community a solid out of the kindness of their hearts when they had to do that.
By building on QMK, MassDrop does benefit the community (assuming the code is broadly applicable, accepted into mainline, etc), regardless of their motivation for doing so.
The mechanical keyboard community seems to be made up of largely enthusiasts and not using QMK overall seems to be a ding against a keyboard at this price. If you're trying to make the ultimate tkl, which this might qualify for if it doesn't suffer like the k-type, then to spend 50k nets them far more in the long run. They no longer have to be at the mercy of others to provide a quality firmware for this product and their future products that will likely leverage this investment. At the same time, the qmk community will continue to develop and enhance it without further Massdrop investment, a double win.
A proprietary firmware would have had to exceed what qmk could offer, be cheaper to develop, faster to develop, or some combination before that would have made sense.
I'm not saying Massdrop isn't benefiting the community rather that they imply they didn't have to give this back to the community.
My ESD problem happened when I touched the metal case, and nowhere near the USB port/cable - there must be some electrical path from the case to the sensitive stuff. At my job, we used to have a test device that could deliver a programmed ESD shock - you want something like that, hold it up to the case, shock it, and see what happens.
I'd be happy to help, but we should probably not do this in a public forum. Is there any way you can contact me directly? I looked to see if I could send a personal message on Massdrop, but I can't find it.
I’m currently drowning and struggling in QMK and all the environments needed to make it work such as Msys2, github,QMK toolbox, sublime text etc. The over all process for me so far has been very challenging like trying to turn on my LEDs on my Preonic I bought here in Massdrop. It feels like QMK goes beyond being an enthusiast for consumers who don’t have any programming under their belt. Support from sites in reddit is challenging since a lot of the people there assume you have some knowledge of programming.
Hopefully it will be easier since I’m learning QMK now, but for those consumers with no knowledge of programming I’ll be afraid for them of what lays ahead unless there is an easier interface reachable for non programmers being developed. Looks like maybe, but I’m still afraid how difficult it will be.
I did say something about their contribution in that they make it seem like this isn't a forced contribution and it is purely their generosity driving the contribution. The implication is that they invested all this money and now will give it all away when they legally had to do so. It comes across as PR spin post IC & K-Type. They could have just wrote, we found QMK, the community standard firmware and decided to improve it and we found a gui that we've continued the development on. They never had to throw money into the discussion. Massdrop invested money into their "core competency" and try to say it doesn't make them money. The firmware is a core piece of a keyboard. So does it make them money? Directly, no, but in reality yes. Some people may not have been interested in a drop without their favorite firmware and it should improve the quality of the product when they can update and fix it.
No matter what, they spent the money and development effort to contribute to QMK. That's something to be applauded, not denigrated, as it would help the community. Any other read is, as someone else said, whiny. And I might add, this is also why many developers and companies are hesitant to jump on the OSS bandwagon, and it's had such an uphill battle. Instead of welcoming the expenditure and contribution, many try to pick at it.
OSS doesn't have an uphill battle. Where have you been in the last 10 years? Pretty much all of the world's tech is ran on a large assortment of OSS projects. Linux? Docker? Kubernetes? The variety of programming languages? There's no uphill battle to use and support OSS.
Since there is a login wall, here is a short introduction video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC0b7qWBedA
You keep trying to backpedal on your reasons for stating it. That ship has sailed, as you said " Flaunting how much money they are spending to improve the firmware and configurator that in turn improves their product in turn making them potentially more money in the long run, (over 600 sales is 120k and doesn't account for the years of leveraging this initial investment), has nothing to do with the spirit of open source. "
It's not about informing from anyone that has read your statements.
I've backpedaled on nothing. On the other hand, you used a strawman to change the argument to one of nonsense and irrelancy about impacting OSS.
It is about informing. I'm glad you knew that QMK had a GPL beforehand and that Massdrop had to give them their contributions regardless of if they spent a dollar or a billion, but anyone who doesn't work in software has 0 idea what a GPL license is or what it means. I personally thought it sounded impressive, since licenses like MIT and similar allow them to maintain ownership of the modifications; except, that wasn't the case and the money was thrown in to make it sound amazing.
And how long have you been in the industry? To say that there was never a hesitation in the corporate world? That's just pure fallacy, and if you look back before this century, you will see that's the case.
Perhaps it's time to just let this drop.
but macs have a lot of esd and overcurrent protection in. like, youtube videos where ppl try out those "usb killer" capacitor things, sometimes the usb socket stopped working, but the rest of the computer survived. on most other laptops (and many smart tvs and phones) the entire system got fried.
I have nothing against ISO users but you guys need to figure your stuff out and SHOW UP on group buy day if you want things to change. I'm rooting for you...
Fundamentally, it's about an extra key between a shift and Z letter (for e.g. <|> symbols) and different kind of layout near Enter (https://deskthority.net/wiki/ANSI_vs_ISO). So telling that ISO is incredibly expensive is misleading at best. I can source my own keycaps but I can't change the board to be a white person one tho.
And no, I will not buy never ever ANSI keyboard, cuz it's useless.
Moreover, @Markuswitch also asked about ISO key caps, and that's mostly what I was responding to. I have a ton of screenshots and examples of routine, comically poor participation from the ISO community on this site if you want to talk about that.
That's factual, there's not enough support for ISO numbers-wise to warrant most designers (of both boards as well as key sets) taking the time to cater to it. If you'll never ever buy an ANSI board because it's useless (to you) but you want to buy cool stuff then good luck, it's not impossible but it's definitely a pain in the ass.
Base Kits: 1,382 UK: 57 Int'l: 71 That's about 9% participation, and you could argue the UK kit isn't even close enough to meet MOQ. I'm sure Massdrop would have stepped in to make the kit tip in this case, but the Chinese producer of MT3 might have easier order quantity requirements. Either way, somebody had to eat the cost of producing a kit with so little participation. And those who DID participate paid more because there were so few of them.
Massdrop doesn't share their sales metrics with us very often, but it's easy to extrapolate this phenomenon to other areas of the Mech Keys community on Massdrop. Frequently, when a drop has good ISO support I've seen Euros complain that the cost is too high, or that Massdrop's shipping is too expensive. There's always some excuse. It's frustrating because it creates a sort of negative feedback loop.
Again, I have nothing against ISO users or ISO layouts and I'd love to see more support for them. But you can't ignore these simple market forces. The ISO community has to step up. Here are the other 3 drops I mentioned if you're interested.
this keyboard was first of costum keyboards I was interested other than plank because of the firmware programmability. I bought plank keyboard, I can live with totally different keyboard. But for something like regular keyboard I love ISO layout that I have used for over 20 years.
I understand that ISO orders have not been up to expectations (and thank you sincerely for data) but thats mostly because Massdrop is virtually not known in Europe rather than lack of interest By consumers.
Massdrop being less known in Europe isn't entirely relevant, as this is just one of many group buy outlets for the mechanical keyboard community as a whole. It has always been an international community, spread across relevant sites like /r/mechanicalkeyboards, Geekhack, or deskthority for example. Only difference is this site contains a lot of other various enthusiast communities who happen to overlap hobbies.
The takeaway from the examples Data posted is that even Ergodox and other exotic layouts (Any kit marked Ergo, Ortho, 40, Exotic, etc) are more popular than ISO. Unfortunately ISO is not universal enough (i.e. AZERTY or QWERTZ) and only relevant in select European markets.
Now the problem with ISO/ANSI is that there is no way of getting <|> symbols in ANSI layout with EST scheme. When I change to US layout, there is no way to get ö ä ü õ letters. I could probably live with slim enter key and the layout irregularities it poses but missing an extra key between shift and z makes it extremly uncomfortable noway how you map it (and is even more uncomfortable when you decide just to switch layouts hundreds of times per day).
I will not give up on ISO. Will continue to support and buy the proper keyboard layouts. So anyway, it seems that I will be buying Corsair K65 instead, as it has RGB lighting and ISO layout with mech keys. Half the price aswell. Unless of course there is some better option?
The thing about custom keyboards like this is that you can program the output to be whatever you want. The only way you could miss certain keys is if you forget to add it to your layout in the software. I mention this specifically because the normal way to get those symbols is either ASCII codes or adding an additional WindowsIME configuration for your language.
But hey, to each their own. Enjoy your Corsair K65, as its pretty good for a consumer board.
I did have a US layout keyboard, it's just not the same. Since every other big manufacturer does Europe layouts, i'll still go for them. Nevertheless, I hope y'all find your "perfect" keyboard.
Massdrop isn't that massive nor do the majority of there sales come from keyboard community. I would say we are most likely 5-10% of there overall gross income