A while back, the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard was nothing more than a dream of mine. Back then, I had to work on other projects to sustain myself, so I could have easily forgotten about it.
But I couldn’t for some special reason, it felt way too important. Because I couldn’t get the keyboard out of my head, I eventually managed to persuade my high-school friend András Völgyi, mechanical engineer extraordinaire, to help make it happen, and gathered a small team of experts.
Over time, we’ve put our heart and soul into the project and made huge progress. But we’re a small team and this challenge asked for much more. Way before the campaign, I knew that we have a secret weapon to success:
You!
On 2015-12-06, you made the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard reach, and then surpass, the $200,000 funding goal!
You are the reason why the UHK exists. It’s people like you who push things further, enable innovation, and help make cool products happen. So let me express my deepest gratitude, and let’s give a huge round of applause to you - because you deserve it big time!
Use the source, Luke!
The UHK was never meant to be a black box. It’s very important for us to open up the design so that you can infinitely customize it to your needs. We know that this mindset pushes innovation forward and it resonates with many of you.
As promised, we’ve just published the electronics design files, the firmware and Agent, our configurator application on GitHub! It’s free as in Freedom, the way it should be!
Our prototypes are already rock solid but many small tweaks will be made to the design in order to optimize it for manufacturing, and you’ll be able to see every small change on GitHub right as they happen. I’ll also clean up the repos shortly and add some documentation to make them easier to hack on.
Congratulations to you and the team Lazlo. Your creation will make coding more efficient and help keep coders wrists healthy.
Thanks for the nice words, Rhoda! And also thanks for the great times in San Francisco. I've had a great time and I'll never forget you!
Just out of curiosity, how will you handle the Chinese copies of this keyboard?
I think there won't be any Chinese copies. Truly split mechanical keyboards are a niche market and I can't see the Chinese cloning these products. Besides, we'll be offering a lot of added value beyond the physical product itself.
If you get to the point where you have chinese copies, I think I would take that as compliment! And just ensure that you win in the added value, as you say - quality, repairbility, service etc..