New orders ship in a week

2019-05-16

TL;DR: We caught up with pre-orders, and new orders ship in a week! Our customers made some awesome carrying cases for their UHKs. The UHK mouse mode is surprisingly useful, and viable for creating digital art. We’re making progress with the key cluster module.

Hi there, and welcome to our monthly status update! Ready for warp? Let’s punch it!

Production status

We’re thrilled to say that we’ve finally caught up with pre-orders, and incoming orders now ship in a week!

There are two exceptions regarding order parameters, though. If you want your UHK shipped in a week, you should pick the black UHK case option and a non-blank keycap printing option. Otherwise your order will take a bit longer due to temporary parts shortages. Feel free to check out the delivery status page for more information.

Please note that the order numbers have been removed from the delivery page. If your order hasn’t shipped yet, it’s because of the above exceptions. According to the delivery status page, you can shoot us a mail to change your order parameters to expedite delivery.

DIY UHK carrying cases

Some of you shared your DIY UHK cases, and they’re so awesome that I ended up writing a dedicated blog post about DIY UHK cases. I’m very impressed by these cases, and I’m sure they’re of interest of many UHK owners.

Creating digital art with the UHK

There are few keyboards with a dedicated mouse mode, and the UHK might just have the best implementation of all. Brandon Yu’s drawing is a testament to this.

I’m super impressed by Brandon’s work, and wouldn’t have ever thought that anyone would create such a beautiful drawing purely with the UHK.

The UHK mouse mode will never be as good as a dedicated mouse, but it’s surprisingly capable in the right hands. This is due to the implementation of the mouse pointer acceleration and its number of configuration options.

Key cluster module progress

We’ve been making progress with the key cluster module. András got the latest CAD model 3D printed, and we’re glad to say it’s more robust than ever.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing some electronics prototyping.

On the right side, you can see a breakout board designed by SparkFun, featuring a BlackBerry trackball - the kind of mini trackball that will be put into the key cluster. It’s wired to an old hand-soldered UHK left half. The left half of the UHK is just like a module from an electrical, firmware, and protocol standpoint, so it’s a great development board for modules. The design of the key cluster PCBs is in progress, and this is the whole Frankenstein keyboard on my desk:

(Yes, my UHK is backlit. We’ll release a backlight upgrade kit eventually.)

I also started to extend the firmware, and created a dedicated project for the key cluster module based on the firmware of the left keyboard half. The two projects contain a lot of duplicate code right now, so I’ll be gradually extracting the shared code to a module API which will be consumed by all the modules.

Your feedback

You’ve been sharing more than your fair share of tweets over the last month. Thanks so much, and as always, please keep them coming!

We’ll be keeping you updated on all things UHK, and we’re looking forward to talking to you on 2019-06-13.

DIY UHK carrying cases

2019-05-01

We don't plan to offer a carrying case, but this didn't stop our awesome customers from making / buying some amazing cases for their UHKs. Let's see some of these cases!

UHK case

If you have a UHK without a UHK palm rest, then look no further than @contracode's case, and make sure to check out his tweet for instructions.

UHK + Palm Rest soft case

If you have a UHK with a palm rest, then Stephen Walsh's case is probably the best choice for you. See his tweet.

Since writing this article, @z0nelevel let us know that the UHK and the palm rest fits into many 13 inch notebook cases like this one:

UHK + Palm Rest hard case

If you have a UHK with a palm rest and you're willing to spend more on a robust case, then Cole Chamberlain's case should be a great option which he made from a Pelican 1085 hard shell case. Check out the relevant Twitter conversation.

Further cases

We're never ceased to be amazed by the ingenuity of our customers. If you have further case ideas, feel free to post a comment about it!

Catching up with pre-orders

2019-04-18

TL;DR: We’ve been making rapid progress with manufacturing. We’ve shipped six mini batches since our last monthly update, two additional mini batches are assembled and we will ship them next week. Afterwards, only three mini batches remain to be shipped, and we’ll be caught up.

Hi there, and welcome to our monthly status update! Ready for warp? Let’s punch it!

Manufacturing progress

Since our last monthly update, we’ve shipped mini batches 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, and 64, which is decent, but not as many as we had expected.

Mini batches 65 and 66 (the latter is not displayed on the delivery status page yet) are already assembled, but we’re waiting for palm rests. Our palm rest supplier is behind schedule, and is expected to ship enough palm rests next week to complete these mini batches. (We ship individual packages as quickly as we can, so no need to email about this, folks.)

Afterwards, we’ll only have to assemble about three mini batches. Should the Keyboard Gods show their support, we’ll catch up then.

That is, excluding orders which contain non-black cases. Those may take a bit more time. Which brings us to the...

Non-black case shortage

Due to a temporary shortage of non-black cases including non-black UHKs and non-black extra UHK cases, orders including such items are delayed until non-black cases roll into our factory. We emailed the affected customers, and offered them the option to switch to black cases to expedite shipping. So the opportunity is there. If you want to switch to black cases, just let us know along with your order id.

This shortage is expected to be resolved in about a month, and we don’t expect that a similar shortage will happen again. We ordered literally tons of colored plastic pellets, so we may not run out for years.

Module progress

András has refined the mechanical design of the key cluster module and ordered a 3D printed version of it which has yet to arrive. Then we’ll evaluate the robustness of the new design. Based on the CAD models, the design looks good. We shall see soon.

The mechanical design of the right-sided modules is being finalized, too. Some details are still unclear, but András made major progress recently, and we’ll get them 3D printed, too. The bottom part of these modules look very similar, and we want to have a shared bottom part for them in order to minimize tooling costs and increase reliability.

The design of the modules is rapidly shaping up, and I’ll have to develop the key cluster firmware soon.

Your feedback

Twitter was noisy, which has become usual when we ship a decent number of orders. Thanks everyone for sharing your nice tweets, and please keep them coming!

We’ll be keeping you updated on all things UHK, and we’re looking forward to talking to you on 2019-05-16.

Coming up to on-demand manufacturing

2019-03-14

TL;DR: We’ve been making steady progress with manufacturing, and we’re about to switch into high gear. We expect to deliver every non-module pre-order by the end of March or the beginning of April. Afterwards, we’ll transition to on-demand manufacturing.

Hi there, and welcome to our monthly status update! Let’s get right to it!

Manufacturing progress

On February 27, we finally received the product boxes which were necessary to resume production, and we’ve shipped mini batches 55, 56, 57, and 58 since then.

Production has been mostly uninterrupted, except for a small shortage of foam parts that reside in the product boxes and protect your UHKs extremely well from any damage on the way. Luckily, we received plenty of foam parts today.

With the above issues out of the way, we expect to deliver every non-module pre-order by the end of March or the beginning of April, at which point we’ll transition to on-demand manufacturing.

On-demand manufacturing means that we’ll assemble orders as they come in. This translates to about a 0 to 5 working day delay from order to shipping depending on the actual demand.

Our current focus

Right now, our primary focus is to deliver every non-module pre-order, and streamline our operation. András is busy with the former, and I’m busy with the latter.

Improving our backend systems will allow us to devote the smallest amount of time possible to operational issues, and focus on R&D in general, and specifically the modules. So even though it’s not directly related to development, it will accelerate development, which is a prospect I’m really excited about.

Your feedback

Jez Cope, an awesome backer of ours has written a short review about his UHK, and so has Melinda Wyers on her blog. Thanks so much, Jez and Melinda!

The Twitterverse was eventful as usual featuring the following tweets:

We’ll be keeping you updated on all things UHK, and we’re looking forward to talking to you on 2019-04-18.

Shipping is about to resume

2019-02-14

TL;DR: Delivery temporarily stopped due to the shortage of packaging material which should resume around February 20. We expect to ship every non-module preorder by the end of March. Regarding the ETA of your order, please check out the delivery status page, including its FAQ section.

Hi there, and welcome to our monthly status update! Let’s get right to it!

Manufacturing progress

Since our previous monthly update, we’ve built plenty of UHKs, but we couldn’t ship most of them due to a temporary shortage of packaging boxes.

It’s taken more time for the printing factory to get up to speed after new year, and they expect to deliver the packaging boxes to us on February 20. We’ll make quick progress once the boxes arrive, and expect to deliver every non-module preorder by the end of March.

We didn’t simply ask for another batch of packaging material to be honest. We redesigned the boxes because they weren’t sufficiently robust. The new boxes are not only fancy, but more robust (and more expensive).

I added a news section to the top of the delivery status page which you’re welcome to check any time. This way, you can keep informed about delivery status the easiest way possible.

DeveloperWeek cancelled

In our previous monthly update, we told you that the we’ll exhibit at DeveloperWeek in the Bay Area on February 21-22. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to make it.

The reason is that our marketing contractor was fired, because I found his work ethics to be poor. Without him, we can’t staff our booth, so I ended up cancelling the event.

With the event cancelled, we won’t be able to give away the free passes offered in our previous monthly update. I’m sorry about this, but now that we have cancelled the event, we can’t do anything. I’ll email all of you who asked for free passes shortly after publishing this update.

As far as the project is considered, I think not attending to DeveloperWeek is actually a good thing. We should fully focus on the delivery of preorders at this point. We’ll have plenty of time to do expos later.

Module progress

Robi has implemented the kboot bootloader protocol natively in Agent. Previously, Agent used the external blhost command line utility which was unreliable. This will make firmware updates more reliable which is very important because the modules will require a new firmware version flashed to your UHKs. We have yet to release a new Agent version that contains this improvement.

In the meantime, András advanced the mechanical design of the key cluster module, so it’s closer to the final design to be mass produced.

As stated in earlier updates, we can’t fully focus on the modules yet. Only after shipping every non-module preorder and transitioning to on-demand manufacturing will be able to make heavier progress regarding the modules.

Your feedback

Mikko Ahlroth wrote a very nice UHK review on his blog. I love reviews like his which go into details and capture many facets of the UHK.

In the meantime, Brett Terpstra has been exploring the wonderful world of custom keycap sets. He pimped up his UHK, and wrote a blog post titled The addictive hobby of customizing mechanical keyboards.

We’ll be keeping you updated on all things UHK, and we’re looking forward to talking to you on 2019-03-14.

Churning out UHK webshop preorders

2019-01-17

Hi there, and welcome to our monthly status update! Let’s get right to it!

Manufacturing progress

Since our most recent monthly update, we have shipped mini batch 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, and 55. As stated in our previous update, we had already shipped every Crowd Supply non-module pre-order, so all of the above orders were made in our own webshop which is a huge step forward.

We knew that transitioning from Crowd Supply orders to UHK webshop orders wouldn’t be easy, and in reality, it’s been way harder than anticipated. Compared to the fulfillment of Crowd Supply orders, the big change is that we don’t just ship to the EU anymore (we used to ship to non-EU countries via Crowd Supply), but worldwide ourselves, and we have to generate invoices upon shipping.

We learned a lot. For example, we learned that DHL, UPS, and FedEx are unwilling to ship to Russian individuals, but fortunately EMS is willing to take the job. We learned that the City field is not mandatory for Singapore which makes the DHL API unhappy. We learned that ZIP codes are not mandatory in Vietnam which made our invoicing system not create invoices. We learned that we have to validate order data upon checkout to avoid contacting some customers when trying to create waybills.

The above is a short glimpse of the issues we’ve been encountering. I’ve been tweaking our fulfillment system since our previous update, even during holidays, and András has been taking more than his fair share of these issues. We have now dealt with enough international packages that I can finally see the matrix, and I know what needs to be done to streamline our international fulfillment operation. When done properly, and it will be done properly, it’ll end up being a highly streamlined, and low overhead operation, but until that point, it kind of feels like we’re walking in mud.

Estimated delivery dates

TL;DR: If you order now, your UHK order is expected to be delivered by the end of February (barring modules, of course).

Right now, we’re held back by a temporary shortage of various components, including product boxes and plastic cases. We could foresee this shortage, and did our best to mitigate it, but companies were closed during holidays which slowed our progress.

If everything goes according our plans, this shortage will be resolved in two weeks, at which point production will get back to normal. We’re doing our best to deliver every one of your orders as soon as possible.

Module progress

We’ve had a get-together with our injection molding supplier and his mold designer specialist to finalize the mechanical design of the modules and optimize them for mass production.

Each module has its own set of challenges. Some are complicated from an electronics standpoint, others from a mechanical standpoint, and there’s also a significant difference in the firmware complexity of the individual modules.

We agreed that we will start with the key cluster module. The main reason is that its shape completely differs from every other module, so no parts of its mold can be reused for other modules. It’s also the most complicated module mechanically.

We had a fruitful discussion, and now we have a much better idea how to optimize the design of the key cluster module for mass production. The most challenging aspect of the key cluster module is its tiny trackball, and the compact design of the module in general, but all in all, it’s doable.

Please note that the aforementioned mud regarding international fulfillment is clearly not helping us accomplish heavy R&D on the modules, so right now we’re primarily focused on streamlining our fulfillment operation and transitioning to on-demand manufacturing. Once that’s done, the modules will get our full attention.

DeveloperWeek

We’ll exhibit at DeveloperWeek in the Bay Area on February 21-22, and you’re welcome to visit us! We happen to have 3 x EXPO PLUS passes ($795 value each) and 25 OPEN passes ($295 value each) to give away. Speakers at the DevWeek include:

  • Cal Henderson, Slack CTO and Co-Founder
  • Renaud Visage, Eventbrite Technical Co-Founder
  • Chet Haase, Google Lead, Android Toolkit

And many more… Check out the full schedule!

Want to get one of these passes? Please retweet this tweet. We will draw the winners on January 29th.

UHK reviews

If you’re into keyboards, the name of Xah Lee probably sounds familiar. He’s a hardcore keyboard geek who’s seen it all, and he recently reviewed the UHK.

According to his verdict:

  • “This is one of the best ergonomic keyboard on the market. I'd say, among top 3.”
  • “Among compact keyboards, this one is the best, period.”
  • “The programing capabilities of this keyboard is the best out there. The software, is also best on the market, bar none”
  • “The keyboard is highest quality built.”

The UHK was also reviewed by Frank Müller of Euronics. According to the article, Frank has a high opinion about the UHK, especially its configurability.

Your feedback

We’ll be keeping you updated on all things UHK, and we’re looking forward to talking to you on 2019-02-14.

Shipping UHK webshop orders

2018-12-13

Any questions, please search our knowledgebase.

Hi there, and welcome to our monthly status update! Let’s get right to it!

Crowd Supply order delivery progress

Just as promised in our previous newsletter, and according to our delivery status page, we’ve shipped every non-module Crowd Supply order. If you haven’t received yours, Crowd Supply has yet to forward it to you which might take days to weeks. You should be good to go, but any questions, feel free to contact Crowd Supply for support.

Speaking of Crowd Supply, they’re in the process of transitioning their support system, and as a result, your recent emails destined to crowdsupply.com might have been lost. If you haven’t received a reply from them in two business days, then ping them again.

UHK webshop order delivery progress

The assembly of UHK webshop orders is well underway. The reason we haven’t yet shipped any UGL webshop orders is because I haven’t yet finished overhauling our order fulfillment system which is necessary for shipping UHK webshop orders.

I’m nearly ready, we’ll start to ship UHK webshop orders within days, and we’ll ship about 200 orders before the holiday season kicks in.

Estimated delivery dates

As you may already know, we have a delivery status page which contains the estimated delivery dates of pre-orders.

I must emphasize that despite our best effort, these delivery dates are fundamentally inaccurate because numerous factors affect production. There are two main factors we’re already aware of which will affect upcoming delivery dates.

First, our factory will be shut down during the holiday season. The delivery estimation algorithm assumes a constant manufacturing pace, so the estimations will move forward during the holiday season. I’m sorry about this, but I won’t dedicate any more time to tweak the estimation algorithm because I have to focus on more important issues, and we’ll deliver every pre-order soon anyways at which point the delivery page won’t be useful anymore.

Second, a temporary shortage of various components are expected including product boxes and plastic cases. Admittedly, we should have managed inventory better, and we’ll do better going forward, but this will probably delay the delivery of pre-orders in January. We’ll do our best to mitigate the situation.

All things considered, we expect to deliver every non-module UHK webshop pre-order in January to February. Thank you for your continued patience and support!

New Agent feature

The “double tap to lock layer” feature of the UHK is a blessing for most, and a curse for some. Some of you told us that sometimes you accidentally toggle layers (most notably the frequently used Mod layer) due to this feature.

Fear not! The most recently released Agent 1.2.12 is here for the rescue, as it allows you to disable this feature on a per-key basis according to the following screenshot.

Unchecking the “Lock layer when double tapping this key” checkbox will magically disable this feature for the relevant key. Just to clean up any confusion, this feature is only available for layer switcher keys (Mod, Fn, and Mouse) as it wouldn’t make sense for other keys.

This Agent version also makes the warnings that told you that macro support is not yet available disappear. If you still see this message, update your UHK to the latest firmware in Agent, and the macro warning should disappear.

On a somewhat related note, I have written an article titled “How can I type accented characters with my UHK?”. The title gives you a good idea whether it’s for you. It’s also worth reading if you’re interested about the difference between USB scancodes and characters, or if you want to know more about Alt codes.

Pimped UHKs

Some of you keep pimping your UHKs, and we’re always glad to feature your beautiful creations!

A very fancy UHK by @menyao. See Twitter thread.
A runic UHK by @ElDanDanito. See Twitter thread.

Your feedback

The feedback you keep giving us is nothing short of amazing. Sometimes we shake our heads in disbelief when we see loads of enthusiastic tweets pouring in. These are some of the many recent tweets we got from you.

As a closing word, we wish you a Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! 2018 was quite a year for us, and we’re just getting started! Thank you so much for believing in us and supporting us!

We’ll be keeping you updated on all things UHK, and we’re looking forward to talking to you on 2019-01-17.

Wrapping up Crowd Supply orders

2018-11-16

  • We’ll be exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin on November 30. Come and meet us!
  • Share Your UHK experience with Quora readers and help us to be the the best split mechanical keyboard for programmers.
  • Early-bird special pricing will end on December 1st. Pre-order Your UHK now, or as many did, get the 2nd one before the early-bird pricing expires.
  • Feel free to check out our delivery status page for the estimated delivery date of your order.

Hi there, and welcome to our monthly status update! Let’s get right to it!

Delivery progress

We keep churning out the mini batches. With this pace, we’ll deliver every Crowd Supply order in 1-2 weeks. (This doesn’t include the modules which we’ll deliver later.)

As it turned out, the fulfillment process of Crowd Supply orders differs substantially from our own webshop. Shipping Crowd Supply and UHK webshop orders together would have resulted in quite a chaos, so we opted to ship them separately.

Given the above, we’ll only start the delivery of the orders from our own webshop after delivering every Crowd Supply order. Originally, we believed that we will be able to deliver every non-module order by the end of December, including the orders of our own webshop, but the recent sales volume has been higher than anticipated, and some orders will slip to January.

This is not ideal, but we’re doing so much better than recently. Not so long ago, our earliest backers were waiting for 2 and half years to get their orders. We’ve been gradually closing the gap, and by the end of the year the wait time will be reduced to about a month, and then we’ll transition to on-demand manufacturing which will reduce the wait time to less than a week, and possibly to a work day or two.

We’re not sure which orders we will be able to deliver by Christmas or before the new year. Please feel free to check the always up-to-date delivery status page any time.

What is the best keyboard for a programmer?

As surprising as it might sound, some people have never heard about the UHK! Please help us to let them know by sharing your experience with the UHK and showing your support by upvoting on Quora.

Early-Bird Pricing

As most of the Crowd Supply orders should be shipped in the next two weeks, we will stop early-bird pricing for the UHK on December 1st, so if you haven’t done so yet, pre-order your UHK now, before the special pricing expires. If you have ordered your UHK, now it’s the best time to get a second one too.

Mechanicon

I’ve had a blast at Mechanicon! It’s been great to meet so many of you, and talk about keyboards, although I’m jealous of you guys, because I really wanted to check all the weird and wonderful keyboards at the meetup, but I had to stay at our booth.

Christian Bäuerlein, the organizer of Mechanicon, is a super nice guy with a huge passion for mechanical keyboards. Pulling together such an event is no small feat, and he’s done a great job. According to the Meetup page, there were 266 attendees this year, which gets doubled on a yearly basis, based on its track record so far. Feel free to check out the photo collection of Mechanicon 2018.

Max wanted to make it, but couldn’t, so he was feeling blue. So blue that he felt an irresistible urge to express his deepest feelings via his most authentic way by assembling a blue UHK.

Being true to his spirit, he posted the details on Reddit, so you can pimp out your UHK the same way he did.

Review video

Jemin You reached out to us, asking for a UHK to be reviewed, and as soon as he received it, he made a review video of it in no time. His enthusiasm is contagious, I like his style a lot, and I think he’s done an outstanding job capturing the essence of the UHK, and demonstrating every major feature.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know a word of Korean, but YouTube offers translated captions, which help a bit.

The state of the modules

András has been hard at work lately. Besides running our factory, he was busy with the key cluster module, so let’s take a peek.

But I know you guys aren’t just interested in the outside. The inside is at least as interesting.

We’re getting increasingly closer to a manufacturable product. The shape of the PCB is crazy and nearly final. Fitting the mini trackball into the module is quite a challenge, but it seems to be solvable.

Luckily, the other modules are simpler than the key cluster from a mechanical standpoint. At this point, we can see quite clearly how they’ll fit together. Here are some renders of them.

I’m extremely pleased by the looks of these modules. The initial design looked neat, but András has truly taken them to the next level.

As previously stated, there’s no ETA on the modules yet. We’ll announce it as soon as we get sufficiently close to their production.

Thank you for reading this update! We’ll be keeping you updated on all things UHK, and we’re looking forward to talking to you on 2018-12-13.

UHK at Mechanicon, and fixing the freeze bug

2018-10-12

We’ll be at Mechanicon, Frankfurt on November 3.

Feel free to check out our delivery status page for the estimated delivery date of your order.

Hi there, and welcome to our monthly status update! Let’s get right to it!

Mechanicon

We got a nice invitation from Christian Bäuerlein, organizer of Mechanicon, the largest German meetup for mechanical keyboard enthusiasts. Based on the video and photos of Mechanicon 2017, it’s quite an event, so we’ll be there!

By “we”, I really mean myself. I’ll make sure to bring a couple of UHKs, so that you’ll be able to give them a try. I’ve never been to Frankfurt, so I’m excited to be there, and meet with fellow keyboard enthusiasts.

I hope we can stretch the fun times, and nerd out even after Mechanicon ends at 20:00. Speaking of afterwards, if any of you could offer a couchsurfing opportunity in Frankfurt, I’d be more than happy to take it. I’d only stay for a night after the event.

Progress on the freeze bug

Miraculously, I was able to reproduce the freeze bug since our last monthly update, I believe I made a lot of progress after that, and committed a fix. Unfortunately, I don’t have a sufficiently large amount of feedback to confidently say so.

Given the unusually rare occurrence of the bug, there’s only one way to figure out whether the firmware is sufficiently stable: to flash it to production UHKs in the factory, which is exactly what we’ll do soon. Worst case scenario: some of you will have to downgrade to firmware 8.2.5. In my mind, this is way better than having to stick to an old firmware version till the end of times.

Brett’s review

An awesome UHK backer, Brett Terpstra wrote a very nice and aptly named article “I wrote a review of the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard for you nerds” on his blog which you’re welcome to read.

To my surprise, Brett also talked about his UHK on his podcast called Overtired. Listen to episode 77, and jump to ~30:40 for the UHK part.

Max’s new keycap set

Max’s never-ending journey of pimping his UHK continues. His current creation is a black and white UHK.

In his true style, Max shared the keycap sets he used on Reddit, and posted a fair number of nice photos on Imgur.

In an interesting turn of events, Max and I have actually met in person since our last monthly update. It just so happened that he was crossing through Hungary, which served as the perfect excuse for the two of us to meet. We ended up talking for hours, mostly about keyboards as you can imagine. He’s a great guy, I enjoyed his company very much, and I’m looking forward to seeing him again.

Module ETA

The standing ETA of the modules is December, but it’s blindingly obvious that we won’t make it in time.

This year has been unusually eventful. We had to scale up production which called for a manufacturing execution and fulfillment system that I developed from the ground up. Then we set up and fine-tuned our webshop. Soon, we’ll have to transition to on-demand manufacturing which will call for quite a few backend system changes. And amidst all these happenings, we’ve been pushing the firmware and Agent further, and answering an increasing rate of customer inquiries.

We keep churning out the mini batches at a steady rate, and things are expected to settle down by the end of the year. Only from that point on we will be able to truly focus on the modules.

In the past, we have always laid out an ETA, often missed it, then updated the ETA. It’s alluring to lay out estimates because it temporarily calms people down, and stops the seemingly endless flow of “When will my order arrive?” questions. But every time the ETA is not met, it erodes trust just a little bit more. We didn’t mean to lay out bullshit ETAs on purpose, it’s only so that hardware is incredibly hard to make, much more so than software, which is very hard by itself.

Given the above, I decided to not lay out an ETA for modules right now, only later when we'll be sufficiently close to their production. I’m confident that we’ll make tremendous progress with them as soon as things settle down, and I welcome you to join to our journey of making the modules by following us via our blog or newsletter.

Thank you for reading this update! We’ll be keeping you updated on all things UHK, and we’re looking forward to talking to you on 2018-11-15.

Remapping keys in Agent

2018-09-17

Although we did our best to make Agent as intuitive as possible, we get questions from time to time. By far, the most usual question is how to exchange the keys of the bottom row.

Let's say you want to exchange Alt and Fn.

Now select the base layer of your default keymap in Agent. You should see something like this:

The important thing to understand is that each key has an associated action. Let's click on Alt.

A popover appears that contains the type and properties of the action. The Keypress tab is active, so this is a keypress action (type) featuring no scancode and the left Alt modifier (properties).

Now let's see the action of the Fn key by clicking on it.

Now the Layer tab is active, which means that it's a layer switch action that activates the Fn layer while holding this key.

You simply have to exchange the actions of the Alt and Fn keys by clicking on them and setting their action type and properties. Make sure to check the "Remap on all layers" checkbox for modifier keys before clicking on the "Remap key" button.

Lastly, click on the "Save to keyboard" button in the bottom right corner.

Last but not least, you can play with the web demo of Agent in the browser without installing it on your computer. Give it a try!

That's about it! Happy remapping!

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