It’s a split keyboard in 4 parts and 101 keys, though i could move the number pad and control pad to outside of the thumb keys if making a 4-piece keyboard is too hard or complicated.
Left thumb gets space, control, and super. Right gets space, hyper (just a 3rd layer), and alt. The keys next to T and N are repeat keys. Above Fn is escape and sleep. Above power is compose.
The control pad has cut, copy, paste, open, select all, save, undo, and redo.
I think that’s every key i’ll need, especially with a compose key and so much extra space available on the hyper layer.
Is there anything i’ve forgotten to consider? Anything i should know about split keyboards, or custom shapes in general?
More specific question, are 0.5u switches and caps available anywhere for all my small keys? I could replace most of them with full size keys fairly easily, but the 101st key on the number pad would make the layout asymmetrical.
QMK is a pain in the Ass for Split boards unless they added support for esp32s while I didn’t look. The problem is that if you really want to use most qmk features like hot taps, macros, layers AND rgb you will quickly run out of flash storage on AVR chips like the pro micro. This would be a non issue on the black pills but last I checked they couldn’t do split boards
I don’t see what’s so bad about a wired split keyboard. I don’t need many layers or any RGB. Wouldn’t multiple independent keyboards covering different parts of my layout work as a split keyboard and be easier to set up as long as i have enough ports to plug everything in?
split keyboards are usually connected with a TRRS cable because you need to be able to communicate between the two MCUs to be able to do stuff like shifting layers, tap dances and chording that can start on one half and end on the other. If you dont want to use the full feature set of qmk then yes, you could just plug in a couple of HID usb devices.
Or just buy a kinesis advantage2 …