Support for Alternative Layouts
This is a summary of how alternative layouts have been supported by kits such as Colevrak and Homing. It is not a discussion of alt layout performance and development, but if that interests you I highly recommend starting with Pascal Getreuer’s A guide to alt keyboard layouts (why, how, which one?). It’s a concise and comprehensive overview with links to some great sites that go deeper. He also has a separate Links about keyboards page. The Keyboard layouts doc he recommends explains layout goals and metrics in detail, summarizing the alt layouts discussed here as well as more than one hundred others. Sculpted-profile The majority of custom keycap sets are sculpted-profile (Cherry, SA, MT3, KAT, etc. - more on profiles generally here) so let’s start there. Because each row has a unique keycap shape, alt layouts require a unique keycap for each legend that moves off its QWERTY row. At first there were two The Dvorak layout was patented in 1936 by August Dvorak & William L....
Apr 23, 2024
There was also that one time a less experienced employee... made a mistake cutting 20 pieces... I may have also dug those out of the recycling bin, once the dust had settled...
This drop does give me the idea to look into solderable USB ends (I can solder just fine, y'all! I don't need no stinkin' snap together USB legos!) LOL :P Honestly, I really would just go with a solderable end. And yellow heatshrink. I'll look for dark blue and grey paracord, and let the heatshrink carry the yellow highlight theme of the keyboard (WASD, arrows, Enter).
Depending on what the connector costs, I'd possibly have considered a paracord/cable delete option, but I don't know if the price would be worth the fuss. Going with solderable connectors. I can get ones with real plastic housings. They're cheap, but shipping will bump it close to what the price here is already at, so I suppose it breaks even for me.
The jacket insulation is very stretchy... The cables I assemble have the jacket pulled back, the cable assembled, then the jacket fed through a compressing strain relief, and butted to the connector's internal housing. It results in a cable that's water, air and even steam resistant. They have to be, cause as a part for a surgical tool, it'll be repeatedly autoclaved, which is basically cooking it in a pressure cooker. >100°C at >atmospheric pressure. The ones we use at the lab where I work are 122-124°C @ 17 PSIg.
The original application for these cables would have been to operate a brushless electric motor in a surgical tool. The three larger gauge wires were to carry power to the motor's windings, and the 6 smaller wires carry power to and signals from the magnetic hall effect sensors that provide the commutation signals from the motor to the drive circuit.
I have more out at my storage unit, but I'd have to dig it up. I presume you're the same bendrexl at GeekHack? I'll send you a PM.
And yeah, this cable IS pretty sweet! :D