Tilt, tent, and screw with the UHK

2015-10-23

The Ultimate Hacking Keyboard gives you options!

Most keyboards don’t have a lot to offer in terms of ergonomics. But with the UHK and our new stretch goal, a super-high-quality palm rest, you’ve got tons of them.

Take a look at the palm rest set up in various arrangements, starting with the flat setup:

flat-stand

Tilted setup:

tilted-stand

Tented setup:

tented-stand

András is quite serious when it comes to durable mechanical design. So much so that the base of the palm rest is a solid stainless steel sheet. We surely don’t expect people to wreck this anytime soon. As you can see, the palm rest also comes with a set of legs which can be set in various configurations. It’s up to you which set-up is most comfortable.

You can even screw in your UHK.

We’ve heard from a few people who love the UHK because it will help them handle their disabilities. One creative backer even suggested that they would be attaching each keyboard half to an armchair. In situations like this, we’ve got you covered!

Mountable case

The keyboard features four threaded stainless steel inserts per keyboard half

As far as we know, the UHK is the first keyboard to use stainless steel mounting inserts. These are perfect for screwing your keyboard into almost any situation.

If you’re mounting your beloved keyboard (like to an arm-chair) and need a little more room than the provided cable can allow, not to worry! We’ve got you covered here, too. You can use any standard telephone cable. A while back, I even tried a 20 meter (66ft) long cable. Check it out:

Mousing scrolling on a Nexus 10 with the UHK

2015-09-24

Recently, mouse scrolling has been implemented in the firmware, making the UHK a fully functional mouse controller. Let me show you how it works.

Of course, the key bindings are fully reconfigurable.

Next up, we'll have some exciting news for you. Stay tuned!

Introducing the factory reset switch

2015-07-29

As the saying goes, "With great power comes great responsibility". This is especially true in the case of the UHK.

You are given the great power of reconfiguring this keyboard in all kinds of wonderful ways, but you can also abuse this power. Imagine binding every key to the letter "A" and setting it as your default keymap. As you might imagine, you end up with a keyboard that is practically useless. Time to meet the factory reset switch!

The switch from the distance

The switch up close

The switch on the PCB

Upon pressing it, the keyboard loads the factory keymap that is stored in the flash, ignoring the default keymap that is stored in the EEPROM, leaving you no way to make your keyboard useless.

I think this is one of the small touches that can make or break a product in some situations.

Upgrading the firmware with a neodymium magnet

2015-07-20

Under normal circumstances, it's possible to upgrade the firmware of the UHK by sending a special USB control request from the host to the keyboard to reenumerate it as the bootloader.

However, when developing the firmware, one can easily screw it up so badly that it won't be possible to reenumerate it as the bootloader via USB. In such scenarios, one has to pry open the case and short the GND and RESET pins in order to enter the bootloader. This is obviously cumbersome, and it would be great to be able to easily reenumerate the keyboard as the bootloader without opening the case, even when the firmware is screwed up.

When I was thinking about this problem, I figured why not put a reed switch inside of the case to short the pins, so I silicone-glued a switch onto the PCB and wired it. Apparently, this is working like a treat.

As it turns out, most reed switches have molded glass bodies that break like a toothpick under the slightest pressure. This is quite a problem for a mechanical device like the UHK. Luckily, not all reed switches are that fragile, and I found one that I especially like due to its rigid body and small size. The PCB of the 6th generation prototype will have a footprint for such an optional reed switch to be soldered by hardcore developers.

This is yet another useful, unique, developer-oriented feature that we can boast.

iFixit gets behind our repair-friendly design

2015-06-17

We at Ultimate Gadget Laboratories are unusually repair-conscious, especially compared to our throw-away culture. Most consumers are used to throw away gadgets when they break without second thinking. It's not only the fault of people because they're conditioned this way. Such an event of product failure is seen by the vast majority of corporations as the golden opportunity to extract even more money out of us, not only at expense of our pockets but the expense of our environment. But it doesn't stop here. Nowadays, companies are proactively trying to disable customers in every way possible repair-wise to increase their profits.

iFixit is at the forefront of progressing the state of repair. They provide a platform to publish tear-down guides so that one can repair any device based on these guides. Their manifesto speaks their values cleaner than I ever could and they also recently founded the Digital Right to Repair Coalition to fight for our right to repair.

Recently, I put together a document to let them know about our ways to make the UHK as repairable as possible. Apparently, they liked our concepts so much that they ended up making a post about us in their blog.

Displaying disassembly instructions on the PCB is one of our many ways to make repair easier.

Thank you very much for the opportunity and especially for improving the state of repair, iFixit. We salute you!

Validating the 5th generation prototype

2015-06-09

Over the last weekend András and I were having a meeting to test whether our latest and greatest 5th generation prototype really fits together as expected. We've made a couple of improvements to this version, the most significant being the stainless steel inserts. Even though this might not seem like such a big deal to the outsider, in reality András had to make a huge number of changes to the CAD model to make this happen.

As always, a picture says more than a thousand words so let us show you the real deal.

The inside of the semi-assembled right keyboard half

The back of the right keyboard half

The stainless steel inserts

The case in pieces

Parts laying all around

Everything fit together very nicely apart from the 1.5mm thick stainless steel plates which were really 1.3mm thick due to the fault of the company that we entrusted. We're gonna have the steel plates of the correct thickness eventually and we'll assemble some prototypes using those.

Make Your Choice!

2015-05-05

From time to time we get emails from you asking about the various options that you will able to choose from. In order to answer your questions properly we've added a new section to our site titled Make Your Choice. You're welcome to check it out to see the details for yourself.

Make Your Choice

Recording the audio samples for the 5 switch types was an especially time-consuming part of creating this section. As usual, we were serious about the details and quality so much so that I've asked my buddy Dömötör Gyimesi, founder and leader of Dreamgrave to help record these samples in their rehearsal room.

Recording the sweet sound of mechanical switches

To make matters even more complex the continuous typing recording was created by me typing "ultimatehackingkeyboard" using every one of the 5 switch types. In practice, this was done by swapping the relevant 17 switches 4 times and rerecording the samples every time. Unlike all the other switches of this prototype these were not soldered in in order for them to be easily swappable. Still, the metal plate is quite tight and a signficiant amount of force had to be exerted in order to pop out the switches. Dömi was patient enough to wait for us so mad props to him!

Trying to pop out that damn switch

As for the gory technical details, an AT4040 cardioid condenser microphone was used for the recording with a Focusrite Scarlet 2i2 USB sound card along with the Cubase 7. Dömi hand-picked the best parts of the samples. No normalization was done on the samples to preserve their qualities as much as possible.

Let me take the opportunity to thank Dreamgrave for their help! Without them the recordings couldn't have been nearly as professional as they are. Be sure to check out Dreamgrave on Bandcamp, and listen to their sweet tunes!

Introducing the first mountable keyboard

2015-04-20

We're in the process of finalizing our 5th generation prototype and thrilled about a new feature: threaded inserts! According to our knowledge this makes the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard the first keyboard ever that is mountable to external objects. "What external objects?" - you may ask. Think about things like a tilt stand, a kiosk or the arms of a chair. As usual, we have some pictures to show you the gory details.

It's easy to spot the 4 threaded inserts per keyboard half:

Mountable case

Same deal with the bottom part of the keyboard halves removed:

Mountable case with the PCB exposed

This makes the shape of the PCBs crazier than ever before:

Mountable PCB

We're super excited about this feature and the possibilities it'll bring. We expect the 5th generation prototype to be the last one before the campaign because we have to kickstart this project eventually. Regardless, we'll keep you posted so let's stay in touch!

The ISO key is back!

2015-04-03

Good news, everyone! After so many of you have expressed your desire for an ISO version, we finally decided to make it along with the ANSI version.

UHK ANSI / ISO keycap animation

As for the Enter key, we will only provide bar-shaped Enter which might beg for some explanation.

The main reason is that bar-shaped Enter is more ergonomical. This layout also allows us to make the rightmost UHK keys shorter by half unit than on most keyboards, which makes the UHK more compact, and the keyboard halves more symmetric.

According to our experience, it's very easy to get used used to the bar-shaped Enter key. You can even swap the functionality of the bar-shaped Enter key and the "\" key above it on your UHK, making the "\" key send Enter.

Feel free to read why the bar-shaped Enter key is more ergonomical.

What's in the Box

2015-03-03

If you've checked out our site then you must already have a good idea of what you can expect to have when your package gets shipped. Regardless, we thought that we should clarify what's in the box by creating a nice illustration and listing the items one by one.

What's in the box

From top to bottom:

Retractable cable: 1 meter long when expanded, featuring 6P4C RJ11 connectors
Lock screw and hex key for permanently interconnecting the keyboard halves if you happen to prefer a one-piece keyboard.
USB Mini-B to A cable: 1.8 meters long
Spring cable: 0.35 - 0.65 meter long, featuring 6P4C RJ11 connectors
Left and right keyboard halves

We've already said some words about the permament interconnection mechanism, but no words have been said about the spring cable, so here it goes:

We provide an extra spring cable besides the retractable cable because some of you have expressed concerns regarding the durability of retractable cables. We've talked to a number of retractable cable manufacturers and we think we have chosen a reliable one but just to address your concerns we will provide a spring cable, too.

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