For the love of split keyboards!
It's been two weeks since The Series' Genesis, yet it seems like just a moment ago that I wrote it—how time flies.
I'm happy to share that a number of activities have been completed!
Things are "shaping" up for Leeloo
When I first configured the column stagger of Leeloo, I didn't want a preconceived shape to influence the overall design. I was aiming for Leeloo to be comfortable, first and foremost. I've been working with Leeloo as my daily keyboard for the past few weeks, and I'm please to say I don't have any changes as far as switch position, nor modifier position—Leeloo feels comfortable, and natural while I type.
As each day passed, I felt more and more confident that Leeloo's switch configuration was solid, and did not need alteration. It would seem that the next step was to simply soften the edges, and create the bottom and top plates.
I wasn't entirely happy with Leeloo's profile, the main reason being that there were too many edges. CNC machines could easily cut out the profile; however, it would be difficult to ensure tolerances were balanced enough between precision machines, and maker or DIY machines like 3D printers, laser, or desktop CNC machines.
The goal? Keep the design simple.
Soften the edges, and let the profile naturally come together. After a little bit of time drawing out the edge cuts in KiCAD, and later bringing the profile into FreeCAD to extrude, Leeloo's form had come together.
ZMK and QMK [are] Ready
As much as I like my clickety split keyboard—pun fully intended—our keyboards aren't very much without their firmware.
For the first week of February, I was able to work through creating both firmware implementations. I began with ZMK because I wanted to be sure all the features built into Leeloo were working. The simplified traces, battery pads, the on/off switch, all three rotary encoder positions, and both wired and wireless configurations.
Check, check, check, check-check-check, and check-check.
When I was happy with the base configuration and keymap for ZMK, I moved onto QMK. QMK was just as smooth with the only extra test being: ensuring both left and right shield rotary encoders worked.
Check, check.
What's next?
My next few steps are finalizing the firmware documentation, and submitting a PR for both projects. I'm hoping to get both firmware implementations into the main branches of each respective project so that when Leeloo is ready, both implementations will be available for download and personalization.
Now that I feel confident with revision 1, it's time to produce the Gerber files, and submit them for production!
For more information, or if you'd like to be notified when Leeloo becomes available, please contact us.
Maybe it's coincidence; however...
Revision 1.0 of Leeloo has been completed on Valentine's Day—so, it is true...
For the love of split keyboards!
Clickety Split
💕