Show HN: I made a split keyboard for large palms

I have "XXL" size hands (some fingers push against tips of most XL gloves I try) and I find the Glove80 very comfortable fwiw

https://www.moergo.com

Switched from Kinesis Advantage after 15 years. Love the Pro Red config that's available out of box without expensive customization.

Neat! I’m surprised to see no splay, is it just subtle or have you decided against it? The thumbs look comfy and aren’t tucked under the palm, which is my biggest complaint with most keyboards, but I’m using Miryoku (36 key layout) and I’m not sure that I’d know what to do with a 34-key layout.

(Miryoku has a kludge to let you press two thumb keys at once to emulate the third, for 34-key keyboards, but that works best with low-travel switches very close together.)

How do you like the lateral pinky position? I’m currently building a Dasbob and love the pinky splay/stagger, but I’m curious about moving the top pinky key to the right.

I like it, but like every other keyboard that I’ve ever seen the modifier keys are in the wrong spot.

As John Napier shows in his masterwork Hands, the hand is created such that the thumb easily and precisely works in opposition to the fingers. The thumb shouldn’t be working alone, it should always be in concert with the fingers. Furthermore, since there are four natural positions for the thumb, there should be four naturally positioned modifier keys under each thumb.

From there two obvious approaches come to mind. One is to stick to a more or less traditional layout with some minor tweaking like you see with existing boards, the only real difference being the location of shift, control, alt, and meta. The other is to go all in on chording. With a total of 8 modifiers where each thumb can reasonably hold down up to two adjacent, there’s enough chording opportunity to have no wrist movement whatsoever. Such a design might resemble a musical instrument far more than a computer keyboard.

I'm currently designing a board from actual traces of my finger movements on paper (I was mildly amused when I found that they are not symmetrical, like all human features) in combination with these: https://fkcaps.com/keycaps/hex. It's also my first attempt at using a MCU directly (kinda, MDB50Q).

Probably not possible to make a product from my anthropometrics, but I could try average out a few hands.

I designed my own for similar reasons, and it's interesting to see a somewhat similar position for the thumb keys. I optimised for hand/wrist position with minimal movement. However, I messed up the column stagger (off by one). Here's the writeup:

https://qubyte.codes/blog/why-did-i-create-a-keyboard

Have you tried or were inspired by The Voyager? My friend has a Moonlander and we were discussing that the Voyager might be the ideal for the setup we were looking for.

https://www.zsa.io/voyager

Interesting, I have found the standard key spacing too far apart, I cannot fathom it being too close for some. I guess hand size variance is bigger than I think.

Could you explain what you did to achieve "diodeless" design and how do you prevent masking?

Looks great! I don't understand how you minimal-key-count types manage, but that's a me thing.

I'm taking the wrist pain comment as a jumping off point to remind those of us who type a lot (surely a comfortable majority!) that a major part of ergonomics is technique. Finding the right equipment for you is a part of that (I use an ergo split myself), but no keyboard can compensate for bad technique.

As an example, I always wince when I see a wrist rest involved in a setup. Wrists should not rest! Proper technique keeps the hands floating above the keyboard, with minimal or no wrist flexion (flexion is in toward the inner wrist) or wrist movement. Excursions from the home row should proceed from the elbows, not the wrists. Even a small amount of extension (opposite of flexion) is bad for you, stretching the tendons which are flexing to type keys.

Palms perpendicular with the keyboard, about two inches above it, and be sure that your rest position has no wrist extension! Flat is ideal, a bit of flexion is ok. Good keyboard technique is much the same between the piano and typing keyboards. Palms perpendicular means that if the keyboard surface is tilted toward you, fix that. A single-piece keeb should be level or point slightly toward the screen, and a split should be tented.

It's fine to rest your wrists on something: when you aren't typing. When you are, it is not fine at all. Once serious RSI and tendon inflammation sets in, there's no going back, it's a condition you'll be managing for years, if not the rest of your life.

If you're experiencing any discomfort typing, or after, by all means look into equipment. But also, please, immediately give some focus to your technique. Identify specific keyboard actions that violate the "do not move the hands from the wrist" rule, and focus on not doing them. Backspace is a common offender, to the point where I mapped caps lock to that key in response to shooting pains in my outer right wrist.

To land this back in the thread: laying out all the keys so that no hand (not wrist, hand) movement is necessary, like the keyboard in the Fine Article does, is certainly one way to prevent wrist movement. I think it's super cool that you worked out a spacing which is right for your hands, too. Even a keyboard like this can't help you if you type from a wrist-extended position, but it surely makes it much easier not to do that!

But for those of us with keyboards where you do move your hands, please, for the sake of your future self: move your hands from the elbows, not with wrist bends. It doesn't take long to get the hang of it, and the difference is night and day.

does the iris look good?: https://keeb.io/products/iris-keyboard-split-ergonomic-keybo...

How big is “large palms”?

any solid portable options?

Now if only I could get a giant hand mouse. Those don't really exist.

Interesting. Back in the '80s, the ergonomic keyboard [0] designed as part of the Japanese TRON project was originally supposed to be produced in three different key pitches for differently sized hands, based on measurements of Japanese people [1].

Another aspect was that some key columns were splayed, being more apart further away. It has inspired many follow-ups in the DIY ergo-mech scene in more recent years.

[0] http://xahlee.info/kbd/TRON_keyboard.html

[1] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/An-Implementation-of-t...

I've yet to wrap my mind around two things that are extremely common on "ergonomic" keyboards: ortholinear keys, and the positions of the C, X, and Z keys in the columns.

I type those with my index, middle, and ring fingers, respectively, because when I pull my fingers back toward my wrists with my hands sitting at a neutral angle, those are the keys they pass. Moving from A to Z on a regular keyboard would be a disaster of a hand position!

Who is it who's teaching people to type that way on standard keyboards? I'm an elder Millennial, so the first class in my school that ever practiced typing in kindergarten, in the very early '90s. When and why did anyone switch to a horrible hand position?

It's only from that horrible hand position that I can imagine "keys in a straight line" being an improvement. My index fingers cover more than one column of keys, so staggering them makes all of them easier to reach, rather than one set really easy and the other set much more awkward. My fingers do not move in straight lines from coiled to uncoiled, and I doubt other people's do either. They splay as they extend. They should be able to cover more keys with less movement extended than they do coiled, so putting keys in straight lines makes it worse, not better.

I find it interesting that there was a time when everyone seemed to get overboard with thumb keys and that now things seem to settle at two per hand.

I have been considering an ergonomic keyboard for a while and came pretty close to getting a sofle [0]. But I realised that I actually like having all the symbol keys. So now thinking about trying a keychron with alice layout [1]

[0] https://josefadamcik.github.io/SofleKeyboard/

[1] https://www.keychron.uk/products/keychron-k15-pro-alice-layo...

If want to get into ortholinear boards, but also want a keyboard with lots of keys, I recommend the Xbows boards. I got an Xbows lite off Ebay for $60, and it's my current fave.

I have glove size 10 (XL usually) and the Keyboardio Model 100 suits me well. Best keyboard i've seen so far.