Click to view our Accessibility Statement or contact us with accessibility-related questions
Showing 1 of 1922 conversations about:
larken
6
Apr 8, 2013
bookmark_border
for those on the fence on this groupbuy, this is coming from a guy who came from a normal qwerty keyboard, never done soldering before, and participated in the first round.
For those who hadn't soldered before:
Neither have I, but there weren't any major problems putting it together (the instructions were pretty clear, but I'd advise first timers like me to do their fair share of googling how to do basic soldering at least), and I got it working pretty easily. it's a fun project. in fact, I did it with a cheap 20 dollar iron I borrowed from a friend who used to do computer science.
usability:
took me a while to get used to the matrix layout, but I'm on my fifth day here, and my typing speed is getting back to normal, though I'm still not as fast as I was with a qwerty keyboard (used to be around 85wpm). (not really an issue while writing, where the thought process was more important than the actual typing speed). one thing I did notice was the alleviation of the wrist pains I was having with a normal keyboard.
the programming of the keyboard was made much much easier due to the wonderful interface provided by massdrop, very intuitive and easy to swap keys around when I decide a different button placement is better.
@ matthew: I'd done some testing with my keyboard, and checked out plover too. I can assure you that NKRO is not supported as of yet, and while it states 6KRO, there are certain combinations that doesn't register more than 5 keypresses at once. I don't think it's suitable for plover at the moment, though it certain has a potential.
on Massdrop:
other than the thoughts on the keyboard, an additional comment on how the last massdrop was ran - it was done fast, and there was ample and regular communication and updates. There was a shipping snafu with my order, but the people at massdrop handled it wonderfully, so they're pretty sparkling on the customer service front as far as I'm concerned.
larken
6
Apr 8, 2013
bookmark_border
A few keys didn't register my keypresses at the first try I fired it up, but the keyboard was indeed working, but do keep in mind that it was my first time soldering. I started directly with smds instead of through-hole diodes, which in retrospective, wasn't the smartest thing to do, especially when I didn't have the equipment to test for bad solder joints.
But hunting down those cold joints were easy enough (i.e. I simply made a note of which keypresses didn't work, and resoldered the diodes on the underside of the pcb, and everything was good to go from there. The process wasn't technically difficult, just a bit of common sense was needed.
I'm estimating anything between 3-6 hours by following the instructions on the webpage carefully, as well as figuring out some parts of the process like programming the teensy, accounting for a few errors and stuff. I took slightly longer than that on mine, as I was doing some geeky mods on the switch internals that added a few hours to it.
Related Products
Drop Refurbished
Like-new products you can trustDrop Rewards
Get $5 for every 500 points you earn! Learn more
Drop Keyboard Club
Become a member and expand your keycap collectionFollow Drop