Layout matters

2015-10-27

Make use of both thumbs!

At first glance of the UHK, the layout may seem relatively standard - but we’ve packed in a lot of special features that really make a huge difference in productivity. Read more about it below!

Did you know that touch typists using regular keyboards all around the world only use 9 of their 10 fingers? That’s because we are heavily conditioned to use either our left or right thumb to press the space bar, leaving the other thumb unutilized.

UHK keyboard layout with Mod and Space highlighted

Please note that the UHK Space layout (the Space and Mod keys are swappable/remappable).

The thumb being our strongest digit, a traditional wide Space bar is just a huge waste. But with a split Space bar, we can put our second thumb to use for anything we want - like switching layers. In the UHK factory settings, the Mod layer is right at your second thumb.

How does the Mod layer make your life easier? Apart from housing navigation keys, it give you easy access to convenience shortcuts!

UHK keyboard layout with the the navigation cluster highlighted

Chances are that you use Alt+Tab hundreds if not thousands of times on a daily basis to switch windows. You may not notice it, but this shortcut is slowly stealing your time. People typically bend their thumb beneath their palm to reach Alt and also leave the home row! What if there was a better way?

On our factory keymap, Mod+D invokes Alt+Tab. No awkward thumb bending, no leaving the home row. Even better, just as when you hold down Alt and press Tab many times in sequence to switch to the next window, you can keep Mod pressed and press D many times in sequence to do the same. You can also compose with Shift to switch backwards. But this is just the tip of the iceberg! Let’s see the other convenience shortcuts, too:

Mod + D → Next window ( Alt + Tab )
Mod + W → Previous tab ( Ctrl + PgDn )
Mod + R → Next tab ( Ctrl + PgUp )
Mod + E → New tab ( Ctrl + T )
Mod + C → Close tab ( Ctrl + W )
Mod + S → Previous workspace ( Ctrl + Alt + ← )
Mod + F → Next workspace ( Ctrl + Alt + → )

Don’t like all of these shortcuts? Feel free to remap it! Also, for those of you using a Mac, we’ll have a Mac-specific preset layout with shortcuts using the Cmd key.

And that’s it for today, ladies and gents - have a great day!

Current event: The Ultimate Hacking Keyboard will be demoed tomorrow (Oct 28, 2015) at the Hackware v1.2 in Singapore. Join the event to see it in action!

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:

1st campaign update

2015-10-20

Welcome to the first in-campaign installment of our newsletter! The last two weeks were more than eventful as I travelled to San Francisco and met some of you. I had some great conversations about mechanical keyboards and other geeky stuff in general. Being treated to free food at Twitch and Google was really just icing on the cake!

And then came the briefings, starting with Tom’s Guide. I’m a pasty nerd who usually just tinkers all day, so getting featured on camera wasn’t exactly the most natural thing for me to do. But it went surprisingly well.

Laci being interviewed by Marshall Honorof of Tom’s Guide

Being interviewed by Marshall Honorof of Tom’s Guide (See the video!)

Next came New York - where we launched the campaign on October 15th, just in time to head to getgeeked (the tech event) to show off the UHK prototypes.

I met with seasoned software developers, MIT graduates, the press, and everybody in-between. I’ve had a great time talking to you, answering questions and seeing the level of interest. It was especially empowering to hear many of you after the demo saying with full conviction that there’s not even a doubt that you will pledge. And according to the post-event statistics, you surely did.

People start to flow into getgeeked

We had a great launch of our campaign at Crowd Supply, collecting $80K in the first 4 days! All thanks for your support!

If you haven’t pledged yet, we still have some UHKs available at the Early Bird price - so now’s the time to order your Keyboard!

The UHK is now listed in Product Hunt. Please check it out, and join the conversation!

Let’s see some statistics of the various options that you have chosen, starting with the layout:

Layout statistics

Keycap printing statistics:

Keycap printing statistics

Switch type statistics:

Switch type statistics

We will keep you posted on about a weekly basis with demos, tear-downs, statistics, and other materials of your interest, so stay tuned!

Our campaign has started!

2015-10-15

We've just launched on Crowd Supply!

Now is the time to head over to our campaign page and pledge. Let's make this happen!

We will be posting to the updates section to our campaign page during our campaign instead of updating this blog.

Also, the main page of our site will be redirecting to the campaign page for the duration of our campaign.

Let’s clap together!

2015-10-09

Tick-Tock, the time is ticking, and now there’s only a week left until the start of our campaign on October 15th.

Making a campaign a success is no small task. But luckily, we have a secret weapon:

You!

You can help us make the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard a success by joining our Thunderclap - which will sync your social voice with all the other UHK supporters to create a massive online announcement as soon as the campaign launches. If we get enough help, it might result in a clap so big that it rearranges the very structure of the cyberspace!

There’s only a week left - so stay tuned!

UHK Launching in 2 Weeks

2015-10-01

After all this time, we’re letting you know that we’ll be launching our campaign on October 15th. Yay!

Crowd Supply will be our crowdfunding platform of choice. We love them for a number of reasons: they are heavily focused on hardware, very hands on with projects, and make sure that their campaigns not only launch and get funded, but also deliver the goods.

To spice things up even more, we’ll be in New York at getgeeked on October 15th, and will launch the online campaign right then and there. It’s the perfect opportunity for you to say hi and play around with our prototypes.

As icing on the cake, I will be in San Francisco from October 6th to the 13th. Wanna meet me over a beer and try out one of our prototypes? Be sure to get in touch!

We will be offering one-time, super-early bird deals at the launch, so that you can get UHK at the best price ever. You’re welcome to share the news with your friends and get them subscribed, so that they’ll be able to get the best deal, too.

Talk to you soon!

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!

2 keyboard halves 20 meters apart

2015-09-17

This video is for those of you who want to mount the keyboard halves to your arm chair and asked whether you can use a long cable for this purpose. You can use pretty much any 4P4C cross-over telephone cable to connect the two halves.

Next objective: Try a 100 meter long cable. ;-)

ANSI or ISO? Which keyboard layout is more ergonomic?

2015-09-09

Lately, I've written about the ergonomics of the "6" key and given the vast popularity of that post, I decided to compare the ANSI and ISO keyboard layouts in the same manner from an ergonomics standpoint. Let's start with ANSI.

As you can see, the keys of the home row on which our fingers reside in touch typing position are filled with red. There's a thick red line in between to show the center of the keyboard for measurement purposes. I also painted Left Shift and Enter in green and Backslash in blue because these keys differ on ANSI vs ISO.

Now let's take a look at ISO.

(Please note that we won't provide a full-blown ISO layout, but a half-ISO layout featuring the extra ISO key and a bar-shaped Enter key.)

Now we have an extra ISO key painted in yellow, but Left Shift and Enter got farther from the center of the keyboard which is a bummer given their frequent use. How much farther, exactly?

	Enter distance	Left Shift distance	Backslash distance
ANSI	6	4.5	6.75
ISO	6.75	5.5	4.5

Based on the above, it's hard to argue that ISO is more ergonomical. Enter and Left Shift is pressed at least hundreds, if not thousands of times per day and they're about 1 unit (20 millimeters = 0.8 inch) farther from the center on the ISO layout. Backslash is closer by 1 unit and there's an extra ISO key but they aren't that frequently used so it's not a great tradeoff.

Regardless of ergonomics, many of you have made it clear that the ISO key is a necessity for you and some of you are too used to the L-shaped Enter and aren't willing to unlearn your muscle memory. I get it, we're creatures of habbits.

On the other hand, it's also interesting to see that a fair number of people use the opposite standard that they should be using based on their home country. For example, I as a Hungarian should use ISO but using ANSI. On the Hungarian layout the ISO key translates to "í" which is a Hungarian accented character, but I write Hungarian text almost solely with US characters, without accents. Also, as a developer, I strongly dislike that my native layout unnecessarily remaps dozens of characters like !, @, # compared to the standard US layout.

How about you in this respect? Let us know in the following poll until it's open!

VIM users rejoice!

2015-08-31

An awesome tester of ours just happens to be a VIM user. Apparently, he customized his prototype by putting a VIM key in place of Esc.

UHK with VIM key

He also modified the keymap by binding Esc to the base layer and backtick to the Mod layer.

Thanks and well done, Gyuri!

Title