Manufacturing has begun, but delivery is slightly delayed

2016-04-14

In our true style, it’s time for our monthly update! We have a bit of good news, and one bad bit. Let’s start with the bad news to get over with it quickly.

A 2 month delay is introduced, thanks to international banking issues

Angry piggy bank

One would think that orchestrating a successful crowdfunding campaign would be the hard part, and transferring money would be a walk in the park. Usually, this is the case, but apparently sometimes it’s the other way around.

We initiated the first transfer back in January, expecting it to go smoothly and quickly. Boy, nobody could foresee what was about to happen! Fast forward two months and several transfer attempts, and some finally made it through. Now our cash flow is back to normal, But we’ve all got a few more gray hairs.

We don’t want to go into details this time, and rather wouldn’t name call anybody, because it’s not totally clear yet who’s fault this incident was. But you can be sure that as soon as we figure it out, we’ll publish a writeup about all the details. Because no startup - and its backers - should be ever put into such a situation!

Admittedly, this changes the delivery date from July 2016 to September 2016. We’re very sorry, and apologize for this extra delay. We want to assure you that everything is back to normal, and the project is on track. You can always expect us to be honest, and upfront regarding project happenings, even if things don’t go exactly as planned.

Onto the good news!

Manufacturing has begun

Manufacturing

Now that our cash flow is back to normal, we transferred the prepayment fee to the mold making company, and they put things into motion. They are starting off with the sheet metal cutting die, which will cut the steel plates for the UHK on which the key switches reside.

András is in direct contact with the mold making firm, and knows them personally. This, and the fact that everyone is so concerned about the details gives us great confidence that things will go very smoothly.

The preparation of the tooling will take some time, but eventually raw metal will take shape, and we’re looking forward to share our adventure with you as it unfolds.

The configuration serializer of Agent

JSON configuration fragment

As far as I know, the configuration of the UHK is the most complex of any keyboard ever created. It features hundreds to thousands of objects of various types, arranged into a deep hierarchy, serialized across various representations that suit different scenarios.

That’s why it’s important to develop a robust, and extensible configuration serializer to deal with this complexity. I’ve laid the groundwork of the serializer, and it’s already able to serialize a subtree of the configuration. But given my myriad of responsibilities I won’t be the one who will finish it, which brings us the our next point.

Our team is growing!

We’re glad to announce that a new developer has joined to our team, so let him introduce himself:

jozsi

[raw]

[/raw]

Hello Everyone!

My name is József Farkas. I graduated from the University of Szeged last year as a Computer Scientist. Currently, I work at CAS Software Ltd. in the research/web team. I’m interested in Angular 2, ReactJS and TypeScript. But I’m also a big fan of C++.

I joined the UHK team last week and I’m working part-time on Agent, porting it to Angular 2, and implementing further features.

Józsi is a left-brain dominant person, who’s especially good at writing solid application logic. Árpi however is a right-brainer who excels at creative thinking, and designing UI and UX. I think they complement each other perfectly and I’m super excited to have them on board!

Beyond 300K

300K USD

Since our previous update, total campaign funding passed $300K. As a matter of fact, it’s at $309,640K right now. Thank you so much for your continued support!

This concludes our April update, folks. Talk to you on 2016-05-19!

3rd UHK post-campaign update: The new firmware is in great shape!

2016-03-17

Two months ago we announced that we’ll be moving to a much more powerful ARM processor instead of the AVR - and one month ago we said that we’ll be using an even powerful one. Moving to a new processor architecture is a big deal, especially with a short amount of time - but we were able to make it happen without hurting the project schedule.

We’ve been working heavily on the new firmware lately, and we’re happy to let you know that it’s paid off big time! This is how the left side of my desk looks:

The rightmost FRDM-K22F board contains the insanely powerful MK22FN512VLH12 processor and runs the firmware of the right keyboard half. It shows up as a fully-fledged USB device, implementing a keyboard interface, a mouse interface, and a generic HID interface. This means that it can act as a keyboard, as a mouse and it’s also able to communicate with the host computer (to transfer configuration data, etc). As proof of this, a button on this board makes it send the scancode of the letter “a” to the host computer, another button scrolls with the mouse downwards, and a script that I’ve written makes the RGB LED display any color.

The middle FRDM-KL03Z board acts as the left keyboard half, and it communicates via the right half via the I2C protocol. A button on this board moves the mouse pointer leftwards, and another button moves it rightwards.

The leftmost board is an Open Bench Logic Sniffer which sniffs the communication of the aforementioned boards, so that the firmware can be debugged more easily.

Want to watch a half minute video of how it works? Pop that corn, then enjoy the view!

Working on the new firmware is a labor of love. Being an advocate and practitioner of clean code, I’ve made sure that it’s not merely working, but supremely readable. There’s a lot of code to be added, but it should be easily hackable by the UHK owner.

Progress on Agent

Arpi has been giving Agent some love. Now you can switch between keymaps in the side menu and change to the macro view interface. This is still considered to be a mockup, but more and more things are working, so you’re welcome to click around!

The UHK in the Wild

Our most beautiful master prototype is truly a word traveller. It’s been in San Francisco and New York to be seen by the media and you at getgeeked, then travelled to Moscow, only to arrive to Singapore to be featured at Hackware v1.2, then went back to Hungary, had a trip to Spain for a testing session, and recently landed in DevConf in Johannesburg!

A UHK was given away by DevConf to a speaker and an attendee, and they liked our prototype so much that they’re in the process of purchasing a 10-pack.

Our sincerest thanks go to Mark Pearl, organizer of DevConf, who got in touch with us, and helped to make this happen!

What’s Next?

The firmware has progressed so far, it’s now time to redesign the PCBs to feature the new processors instead of the old AVRs. There’s also a lot in the works on the mechanical design front, so stay tuned.

Talk to you on 2016-04-14!

Agent is coming together, looking for a firmware developer!

2016-01-14

A month ago in our previous newsletter we promised to send you an update on the post-campaign happenings on January 14th, so here it is! There is a lot of ground to cover, so fasten your seatbelts and we’ll get right to it!

Extra keyboard cases & keycap sets are for sale

Some of you contacted us to purchase extra keycap sets and cases, and we’ve been very much willing to serve your needs, so why not offer them as extra perks? You’re welcome to purchase them on our campaign page.

Meet Agent, the configuration application for the UHK

We’re proud to show you the first screenshot of Agent, our cross-platform configuration application. It’s being developed by Árpi, a new developer of ours. Please keep reading for more.

The mechanical design is being finalized

András is hard at work finalizing the mechanical design of the keyboard case. Mold making is by far the most time consuming task of the manufacturing process, so it’s supremely important we start as quickly as possible in order to deliver on time.

We’ve already struck a deal with the manufacturing firm for the injection molding tool for the plastic case and the cutting tool for the steel plates, and we’re in the process of discussing relevant design issues with them. Sourcing of the raw material for the steel guides is also in progress - from a well-esteemed Austrian company.

From the very beginning, we’ve been mindful to design the UHK for manufacturing, but there are some details yet to be finalized. One such detail is the connection between the two halves and the modules.

Originally, we used a battery connector because it was easier to use an off-the-shelf part - but later we figured out a much better way: dedicated pogo pins. This is a more robust and better looking solution than the battery connector. The 6P4C connector was also replaced by a 4P4C connector and its wiring has been reversed. This way a standard telephone cable can be used to interconnect the two keyboard halves.

There are a couple of details like the above, and András is rapidly moving forward to address them, so that we can submit the CAD files to manufacturing as soon as possible.

Two developers have joined to our ranks

Back in August we were contacted by Árpád Csányi, who expressed interest in the UHK. Fast-forward to November, and we managed to meet in person over a couple of beers after I gave a talk on the UHK in Szeged, Hungary. It was apparent that he was interested in the project, but I wouldn’t have thought in my wildest dreams that he’d end up being the front-end developer of Agent, our configuration application! Árpi is not only a powerhouse of UI/UX ideas, but he’s very much willing and able to implement them.

After I created some mockups of Agent he quickly followed up to present his ideas and improvements. He then started to write HTML and CSS to make the mockups go alive! We’re making rapid progress and are aiming to freeze the UI/UX specification of Agent by the end of January.

Please note that these mockups are a work in progress but you’re welcome to add your suggestions to the docs. Don’t forget to uncheck the View -> Print layout option in Google Docs or else some pictures will be cropped.

Right after open-sourcing our design a, mysterious GitHub user started contributing to our electronics repo. Say hi to Mr. Spencer Owen, who is very much into devops and using his rad skills, he set up a visual diff mechanism in our electronics repo, so that now we can actually see the changes of the circuit boards that get modified by contributors. This is very much needed because unlike plaintext files, circuit boards can’t be diffed in the traditional way.

Right now Spencer is working on making the PCB compatible with Matias switches. Due to the lack of compatible keycaps, this doesn’t mean that we’ll be able to provide Matias switches from the get go, but we’re trying to future-proof the PCB so that the opportunity will be there, and eventually we can make it happen.

Moving to ARM, and looking for a firmware developer

It’s been a pleasure and privilege to work with Árpi and Spencer and I’m very much looking forward to further expand our team. It may surprise you, but we’re not actually primarily looking for an AVR developer. We’re looking for an ARM Cortex-M4 developer! Why’s that? Let’s consider the following table:

Processor name	ATmega32U4	MK20DX256VLH7	Units
Processor core	AVR8	ARM Cortex-M4
Rated speed	16	72	Mhz
Flash memory	32	256	kbytes
RAM	2.5	64	kbytes
Price	3.6	4.55	US Dollars

The above numbers are pretty telling. The ARM processor costs only a buck more than the AVR but it’s about 10 times more powerful! The plan is to replace the AVR on the right keyboard half with ARM, and keep using AVRs in the left keyboard half and in the modules - which don’t need as many resources as the right half.

We could possibly stick to the ATmega32U4 and implement the planned feature set, but the available 2.5 RAM is very tight. It’d require us to always think about how to not exceed memory and vastly optimize the firmware for memory consumption. This would slow down development and wouldn’t give us room to implement more sophisticated features later on. Bulkier AVRs are moderately more powerful and considerably more expensive, so I truly believe that ARM is the way forward.

It’s also very important to note that the MK20DX256VLH7 is not just another ARM microcontroller, but the brain of the Teensy 3.1 and 3.2 development boards. This is great news because there’s a huge amount of support available out there!

Are you familiar with the Teensy 3 platform, or do you know somebody who is? Do you enjoy the thrill of Open Source? Would you love to work on a one-of-a-kind mechanical keyboard, and help push innovation further? If so, we’d love to have you on our team!

What’s next?

We’re making rapid progress on multiple fronts, but there’s still a lot to do! We plan to finalize the UI/UX specification of Agent by the end of January. I’m sure that we’ll have a lot to talk about in our upcoming updates.

Thanks for reading, and talk to you soon - on February 18th!

The UHK got funded, goes open source!

2015-12-08

100% funded

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!

Clapping

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!

Open source

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.