I managed to quit vi once, I’m not recreating that experience again. IJKL all the way. Same hand and positions as the arrow keys, just without having to move your arm.

I’m running out the door, so sorry for keeping this a little terse. Just wanted to throw out some things for you to potentially look into with regards to your USB-C port in case you were about to send this PCB off for fabbing.

1 - Consider including an ESD Protection chip. It’s a small IC which you pass your data lines through. It can help protect your microcontroller in case there’s some static electricity in the cable you’re plugging in.

2 - There’s a variety of different detection mechanisms and handshakes in USB-C to identify the amount of power a USB-C device supports. Adding a pair of 5.1K resistors to the CC1 and CC2 pins on your USB-C port will definitively tell the device on the other end that your keyboard is a simple USB 2 device and should get a nice chill 5V. Some devices will default to providing 5V is CC1 and CC2 are left floating, but others are more picky. Adding the two 5.1K resistors will help make sure you don’t run into any trouble with a USB-C to USB-C cable.

3 - I’m less confident on the specifics of this one, so maybe do a bit of research yourself. Most of the USB-C implementations I’ve seen on keyboards tie the redundant pins on the USB-C port together. I believe some of these are only connected when the cable’s face up, and others are only connected when the cable’s face down. Routing them together on your board will make sure you don’t run into any trouble with cheap USB-C to USB-A cables.

Here’s a quick example of those three items in action. (Ignore the weird vias and disconnected ground nets. I deleted the fill to make it easier to read.)

Sorry to post and run. Hope that helps!

Another recommendation to take a look at the Sofle. It’s got a lot of the positives from the Corne, but it also has a number row and plenty of mod keys to help ease the transition.

I like the look of it! I wouldn’t worry about the arrow cluster too much. If you want it, you want it. There’s some keyboards out there like the Afternoon Breeze or the RevXL that put it off to the right. It makes the board asymmetrical, but it would play a bit more into some of your existing muscle memory.

Keychron has some good entry points for getting into the mechanical keyboard scene. Lots of layout options, some open source keyboard firmware support, and you can buy a lot of them barebones if you want to bring your own keys and caps.

Looks great! I love the choice of keycaps!

Are you looking to build a keyboard from a kit, or design one from scratch?

SplitKB.com has forked a few popular open source keyboard designs like the Corne or the Sofle. Even if you don’t end up purchasing their kits, they have some excellent build guides and documentation. If you’re a keyboard or DIY electronics beginner, it’s a good way of seeing what sort of techniques and tools you’d be in for when soldering things like microcontrollers, switches, and diodes. https://docs.splitkb.com/product-guides/aurora-series/build-guide

If you’re interested in designing a keyboard, I’d recommend looking into the keyboard layout editor Egogen. https://github.com/ergogen/ergogen

Honey, do.

This is pretty typical for universities. They don’t want the airwaves clogged, doubling up NAT can lead to networking wonkiness, and they don’t want you giving university network access to unauthorized folks with an open AP.

When you say VR streaming, you just mean wireless from your PC to the headset, right? There’s a chance you could do that with an offline wireless router if the VR experiences you’re looking to play are single player.

Understood. Have a pleasant day.

V2H unfortunately isn’t broadly available as a concept in the US yet.

For what it’s worth, most of the Kia/Hyundai V2L plugged into your house shenanigans aren’t as convoluted as they might seem. Basically there’s something called a Transfer Switch that you can get installed into your house’s circuit breaker. It tells your house to stop pulling power from the grid, and start pulling it from whatever you have plugged into the switch. It’s technology that’s been around for ages for gas generators. You can hire an electrician to install it. The big issue with the current Kia/Hyundai V2L and transfer switch setup is 1) the car’s doesn’t put out enough voltage to power an HVAC system in certain power outage situations, and 2) You don’t any of the novel back and forth charging where your house / the grid can use your car like a cheap reserve. Folks have used Ioniq 5s to keep a fridge and some lights going for days though.

At this point your options are be a Lightening early adopter, wait, or buy whichever electric car you’d like now and maybe look into a generator.

It’s not a threat. It’s a warning. Get out of there TPM.

“My battery is low and it’s getting dark.”

For a bit more context, this is the fan project “Bloodborn Kart” with its IP serial numbers filed off.

NuPhy’s got some interesting options as well. https://nuphy.com/collections/keyboards/products/halo75-v2-qmk-via-wireless-custom-mechanical-keyboard

The low profile space is a little tricky. It leans into column staggered ergonomic boards really quickly. Kailh’s Choc switch is as low as you can go, but those folks get really custom really quick. They’re not big on function rows or arrow clusters, so the next step after Keychron or NuPhy would be something along the lines of the Afternoon Breeze. https://www.afternoonlabs.com/breeze/

Have you taken a look at any of Keychron’s offerings? https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-k3-max-qmk-via-wireless-custom-mechanical-keyboard Checks most of the boxes other than the knob.

The Hard Fork podcast had a pretty good episode recently where they interviewed one of the engineers on the project. They’d troubleshooted the spacecraft enough in the past that they weren’t starting from square one, but it still sounded pretty difficult.

Modern satellites are protected by various means of encryption, but there’s an enthusiast community that tracks down and communicates with very old unencrypted zombie satellites. There’s even been an NGO which managed to fire rockets on an abandoned NASA/ESA probe (with their approval.)

The Voyagers benefits primarily from the lack of groups with an adequate deep space network to communicate with it. Their communication standards are otherwise completely open and well documented.

I still cannot believe NASA managed to re-establish a connection with Voyager 1.

That scene from The Martian where JPL had a hardware copy of Pathfinder on Earth? That’s not apocryphal. NASA keeps a lot of engineering models around for a variety of purposes including this sort of hardware troubleshooting.

It’s a practice they started after Voyager. They shot that patch off into space based off of old documentation, blueprints, and internal memos.

Just got my Ambient Twilight silent choc switches in! These switches feel incredible. I’d been running tape/floss modded Red Pros up until now. Their sound is similar depending on how well you did the mod, but they always felt disappointingly mushy. The Twilights are even quieter and have a nice satisfying linear feel. They’re definitely quiet enough to start bringing to the office more regularly.

The keyboard’s a variant to last year’s TypeBoy. A pair of modded Game Boy Advance cartridges house a custom PCB, XAIO BLE, shift register, and Sharp Memory Display. (When you don’t accidentally crack one during installation. Whoops.) The Mark II trades the staggered column setup for an ortholinear layout with an offset mod row. The new shape helps channel the handheld vibes a bit better. I went with a PCB stack this time for the case. Partially to try something new, partially to hide the bright Pro Red switches. I’ll have to let the Twilights shine a bit more on the next revision.