Time flies! We promised to touch base every month - so let’s get right into what we’ve been working on!
András has been having his fair share of CAD-filled days lately, and as a result we’re days away from sending the design of the case off to manufacturing. He’s made a million little tweaks and a couple of more significant changes.
The fixation mechanism of the feet is definitely a major one. We brainstormed foot design ideas for a while, and finally found the best option. To keep the UHK as compact as possible, it will feature adjustable (flip open) feet that are entirely removable in addition to the small, flat rubber feet. This way if you decide not to use the adjustable feet, they won’t occupy any extra space. And if you do want them, they can be easily installed with 3 screws per foot. Once you do, you’re able to flip them open in a moment. The current design allows for positive tiling, negative tilting, and tenting - The best of every world! András has yet to finish the design of the adjustable feet so stay tuned for more news.
We’re also stoked about having added pins for LEDs and Matias switches! We use universal switch footprints that combine the pins of Cherry switches (optionally with fixation pins), Matias switches, and LEDs. We designed the stiffening ribs of the bottom case in a future proof manner by routing them around the hybrid switch footprints to avoid mechanical interference. Please note that we won’t be able provide either an LED, or a Matias UHK version for a while, but the opportunity will be there for modders. You can see the pins on the following section view.
Another major change is the finalization of the physical layout. Fear not, you shouldn’t even notice the subtleties if you aren’t watching very closely. Space and Mod has been split right where the G and H keys meet. This is the best option ergonomically, as it’s right between the hands of touch typists. This gave us an opportunity to use more standard keycaps so those of you who want to replace keycaps will be in a better situation. Lo and behold, our final ANSI physical layout:
And the ISO version:
Funny thing is, poor András has been working day and night to implement this seemingly small change, as it affected the geometry of the CAD model in major ways. He definitely deserves a day off... only to work even harder as we march towards manufacturing!
Speaking of the above, I’ve created a dedicated layouts and keycaps FAQ page on our site lately, and while being there also spruced up the main FAQ quite a bit to satisfy your endless curiosity.
In our previous update we were looking for a firmware developer to port our existing firmware to NXP’s Kinetis platform and develop it further. We’ve been getting quite a few impressive applications and suggestions.
Say hi to Mr. Jan Rychter, who has been eager to help us, and offer his very valuable advice. Since first contact we’ve been exchanging emails full of geek talk. And did I mention that he’s also a most esteemed backer of the UHK?
Jan got me up to speed in no time. As it turned out, Teensyduino is not the best foundation for a serious firmware application. It’s nice for prototyping purposes but NXP’s sophisticated Kinetis SDK is a much better platform for this purpose.
Unfortunately, the MK20DX256VLH7 processor that we originally planned to use is not a good choice because KSDK won’t ever target it. As crazy as it might seem, there’s a more powerful, fully supported, and cheaper alternative on the market: the MK22FN512VLH12.
How powerful and cheap, you ask? Let’s compare!
| Processor name | ATmega32U4 | MK20DX256VLH7 | MK22FN512VLH12 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Processor core | AVR8 | ARM Cortex-M4 | ARM Cortex-M4 | |
| Rated speed | 16 | 72 | 120 | Mhz |
| Flash memory | 32 | 256 | 512 | kbytes |
| RAM | 2.5 | 64 | 128 | kbytes |
| Price | 3.6 | 4.55 | 4.04 | US Dollars |
Mind blown. Twice the power for less price? I’ll take that on any day of the week!
Right now, there are a couple FRDM development boards on my table, one of which running our Kinetis firmware port which enumerates as a keyboard + mouse USB device. This is already looking great, and you can expect further major progress shortly, so the port is definitely within reach, and I’m happy taking this direction.
Árpi is on a mission to make Agent the most beautiful keyboard configurator application ever crafted. He never ceases to amaze me as he massively cleans up the UI of my original mockup while keeping the original functionality intact. This is the most up-to-date screenshot of Agent:
You’re welcome to check out Agent in the browser. Please note that there’s only a minimal UX code behind the UI, but it should give you a good idea about the final interface.
Thanks for reading, and talk to you on 2016-03-17!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
After 2 months of running the campaign, it came to an end on Monday with $246,510 raised - What a crazy ride it has been!
As it turns out, you’re super smart folks and gave us loads of awesome feedback. This is very valuable because it will make the UHK better. Much appreciated, everybody!
Even though the campaign is over, it doesn’t mean that people won’t be able to purchase UHKs! We’ve just entered into the pre-order phase. The current deals are still very good compared to our final retail price that will come into effect after shipping the crowdfunding orders, so you’re welcome to spread the word about this opportunity while it’s available.
For those of you who ordered before colored cases became available, now is the time to make your choice! If you’d like a black case, there’s no need to do anything. If you’d like a different color, you can change it via this poll.
András and I are finally be able to put our engineer hats on. We’ll have to further refine the design to make it ready for manufacturing, then get the tooling done and actually manufacture the goods.
András will be busy with the mechanical design, dealing with manufacturers and personally overseeing the mold making process. I’ll have to focus on the electronics, firmware and host-side software. But rather than implementing everything alone, I’m more than willing to delegate - possibly to you! I’ll talk more about this in our upcoming update.
Speaking of updates, from this point on we’ll be sending out monthly updates on our progress around the middle of each month. The next update will go out on 2016-01-14.
Exciting times ahead!
Great news, everybody! We’ve just reached, then surpassed $230,000, so the 1st Stretch Goal is now funded!
Here is the result of the color poll. Given the level of interest, we decided to offer the top 4 options, and black for purchase versus the originally promised 3 options. Colors galore!
We’ll ask you about your preferred color after the campaign.
We’ve been thinking for a while of offering something that is very dear to our heart: a toolkit. The UHK is designed to be hacked, and so this toolkit is perfectly aligned with our philosophy, enabling you to tear down your beloved keyboard in no time. We will give a FREE toolkit to everybody who pledged towards the keyboard once we hit $250,000. So let’s make it happen!
Just 30 hours to go, and this is your last chance to save $50 and get the UHK at Special Early Bird pricing of just $200!
If you don’t have enough funds right now, You can get a $50 coupon and with this coupon you will be able to order the UHK anytime after release at the same Early Bird price of just $200!
We did a poll recently about additional colors for the UHK case. Here are the results so far:
Thank you for your feedback!
This poll will be closed by the end of the campaign, so please vote while it's possible.
Now that we have reached our goal what’s next?
Colored cases! If the funding amount reaches $230,000, we’ll make more case colour options available. And these cases are molded out of colored plastic, so there’s no paint to peel off. Take the poll below, and help us choose which colors should be available - we’re super excited to hear your preferences.
Let the voting begin! You can take a look at the high resolution versions of the following images on Dropbox.
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!
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!
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!
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.
It’s been a roller coaster in the past 6 weeks, and we are entering final phase of our crowdfunding campaign. With 10 days left, we are almost fully funded collecting $190,000, and at this point we would like to ask for your help to make the UHK happen!
It will take just a few minutes to complete these 5 steps to spread the word about our campaign and let your friends know why you love the UHK. It is also a Last Chance for them to get the UHK at special early bird price.
A question was posted on Quora recently, asking "What is the best keyboard for a programmer?". A total of 49 answers were posted and the UHK was included too. In just two weeks, the UHK collected the most upvotes and became the No.1 keyboard for programmers!
One of our supporters in Korea created a video for their local audience. Big thanks!
So far 819 keyboards have been pre-ordered - here is the breakdown of the options requested:
ANSI is the clear winner regarding the Layout.
No surprise here: The most ordered Keycap Printing is for the Linux configuration. And then it’s a close fight between Mac and Windows.
Blues & Browns dominate the scene here, accounting for 75% of total boards.
We are working hard on the UHK to make sure we provide a truly unique and high quality offering. We will keep you updated on our progress.
Thank you everyone for participating in the Reddit AMA! You’ve asked loads of thoughtful questions, so I thought I’d share some of the particularly interesting ones.
Q: Will you offer alternative keycap printing other than QWERTY? Like country-specific prints or Dvorak / Colemak?
A: Andras is currently looking into the possibility of offering fully custom keycap printing. If we can make it happen, then we’ll send out an update and you’ll be able to update your order accordingly. If this is an option, we may also be able to create layout design software, allowing you to design your own keycap printing layout!
Q: Assuming everything goes good with the Crowd Supply stuff and so on, i.e. everything goes according to plan and all the backers receive their keyboards in July\August some time, then what? What are the plans further, if you actually have made any yet, that is 🙂 What I’m most curious about here, is, when I get my keyboard, and presumably love it, I will definitely want one or two more, any idea when that will that be possible?
A: There’s no shortage of plans. 🙂
After shipping every unit in July, we plan to spin up production so you’ll definitely be able to order some more UHKs / modules pretty quickly.
Going forward, we plan to design other UHK variants of different shapes and sizes based on our unique hardware-software architecture. We also plan to design additional modules based on community feedback and demand.
Q: What are your thoughts about alternative split keyboards? What do you think the UHK does better, other than the extension modules?
A: I believe that the UHK has a couple of benefits compared to other split keyboards, apart from the extension modules:
The UHK is very compact, especially for a split mechanical keyboard, enabling you to easily carry it around.
The UHK is modular and extensible. I don’t only mean the modules but the whole design from the ground up. For example, the palm rest is also an optional accessory. You can even use the stainless steel inserts on the back of the UHK to mount it to your armchair or almost any object.
The UHK uses a sophisticated protocol to communicate between the keyboard halves and the modules, making it quite advanced compared to other keyboards. Imagine using our configuration application, then merging and splitting the halves, adding and removing modules and witnessing these actions happening visually in the configuration application real-time. Then you can click on the trackball module for example and adjust its pointer movement speed.
When you reconfigure other keyboards, you generally reflash the whole firmware of the keyboard. The UHK implements a custom protocol and uses an internal EEPROM for storing configuration data. I think our approach is beneficial because we don’t need a compiler toolchain to produce the firmware, just an application that speaks the protocol. It’s also faster to transfer the updated configuration, and it’s possible for the configuration software the read the configuration from the EEPROM. Reconfiguring the UHK is a one-click action, instead of using an external web configurator, then downloading a firmware, then uploading it to the keyboard with another application.
Q: I’m very excited to hear that you’re going open source. What was the biggest influence on that decision?
A: Being a Linux user and software developer, open source is very natural to me. On top of that, I’ve had various negative experiences with closed products. One of my routers didn’t allow me to use a 3rd party dynamic DNS providers that would be trivial to script if I had shell access. Then my sister bought a DVD player, the subtitle fonts were too damn small and there was no way to enlarge them. We’re surrounded by devices driven by general purpose processors that’d enable us to do pretty much anything with them, but if the firmware / software / protocols are closed then we’re disabled to improve / customize these devices. I’d hate to disable people by building yet another black box.
Q: How are you guys combining this with your "real" job? Maybe you do this full time, or do you plan to in the near future? Good luck with the project. Can’t wait to get mine.
A: I was working as a freelance software developer for various companies over the years, and Andras has a family business going on. It was originally super challenging to develop the UHK due to the lack of free time.
Starting from 2015 September, I cancelled my freelancing gig in order to prepare for the campaign. Andras also started to put more and more resources into the project, and development significantly accelerated.
Going forward, I’ll be working on the UHK full time by earning the absolute minimum required until we grow. Andras will also handle the project as his number one priority after the campaign. Full time is the only way at this point to create a truly exceptional product and deliver on time.
Q: Will there be a DIY version any time soon? I guess there must be more keyboard hipsters like me who have their exotic choice of lubed MX switches with custom springs laying around so a DIY version would be easier to assemble (rather than desoldering the stock ones) and also would cost a little bit less.
A: We’ve actually already had a backer who wanted his UHK without switches and without the case. Being quite DIY-friendly, we offered him such a version at a reduced price point and he took the offer.
I think we’ll offer assembled PCBs forever, but bare, unpopulated PCBs are not planned. Given the potential errors in assembly, customer support would likely be too crazy.
That’s it for the top AMA questions! But if you have any that have remained unanswered, please ask!
There are things in life that you always wanted to ask, but were too afraid to do so. Now’s your chance to let out your curiosity! I’ve just started an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit.
You’re welcome to ask me anything, and I do mean anything. Ask about designing and building the UHK, preparing for and running a crowdfunding campaign, or about the everyday life of a pasty geek.