I’ve made the 0.1 design available to the public now.
Ive been using it for a few weeks myself and its quite nice to use, particularly with the aluminium chassis (the GitHub repo has FDM and CNC designs).
In any case, for those curious the GitHub is here: https://github.com/MickiusMousius/RolioKeyboard
I am working on the V1.0 model, PCB’s should arrive in a few days. I think the V1.0 release should be good enough for others to make. The current model is nice, but there are a lot of improvements in the pipeline particularly regarding aesthetics.
V1.0 sample below:
That’s so awesome. In amazed you’ve put it all out there for others to sell. I’m sure it’s going to show up on AliExpress pre-made soon. I’d happily buy this.
This is a super cool keyboard. I love the “roller”. I could be tempted to make one of these if it had the number row.
Exactly this. I need a number row for work or gaming which limits the split and ergo keyboard options significantly.
Does the Lily58 or Iris fit your needs better then? Or is there something else about this board that trumps those other 2?
The primary difference to me seems to be roller vs rotary encoder and number row. And while I too, prefer rollers over rotary encoders :D… if the number row is critical to your use case those boards seem to be a better option.
The Iris looks good, as does the Lily58, but my ideal board for work would be a split with a trackball on the right and a scroll wheel on the left, preferably with a bit of a dactyl style tilt for better ergos. I’m pretty new to mechanical keyboards in general, so if a roller or rotary encoder is what I really need to get those, I humbly apologize for using the wrong terms.
@Followupquestion
Do the layer options not work for you?
@hellweaver666
It’s extra key presses hundreds or thousands of times a day ( I work with numbers). I also need a 10 key, but a separate 10 key is fine. I’ve been eyeing one of the ergonomic keyboards with the trackball because the central trackball would cut my hand movement by 50% (estimated).
It’s interesting to see these rollers popping up some more, especially with two posts about them in such a short period of time(https://lemmy.world/post/4760068?scrollToComments=true). They’re much better than the normal rotary encoders and I’ve enjoyed using mine a lot. Though sourcing them is unfortunately a bit tricky (and thus on the more expensive side).
I’m currently making a new board using the Nintendo Switch joysticks to replace them, I’m curious how the two compare.
I’d love to see that.
I have a design I’m tinkering with as an idea that has two 5 way sticks. The actuation force is too high IMO, but I could not find a suitable digital switch.
Are you interfacing to the switch sticks using analog or do you have some nice low power digital solution?
I’m using the ADC pins to make use of QMK’s joystick feature. Or at least that is the plan.
That’s an original stagger. Why?
Otherwise, beautiful board.
Thanks.
I took some hand measurements and this is what it came out with:
I didn’t add the splay, I started to add it, but decided that in practical terms it likely doesn’t make much difference but it made things quite unwieldy looking.
In practice I’ve found the pinky column needs to drop by about 3-4mm which is a change I have in the newest iteration.
Be careful that, with this tool, you are naturally reproducing the habits you already have. I’ve seen this tool used by Ben Vallack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoBjVhJY4io&list=PLCZYyvXAdQpsEWfa6OEBOhHn48SWgneoD) and you can see, in his progression, that at first he was for no pinky stagger, and now he is for aggressive pinky stagger.
Ah, yes, I did suspect this was muscle memory at work.
The stagger is very similar to that of a Sofle though, and, inline with goals it should hopefully be usable by other newcomers.
Awesome looking board. Thanks for the files!
No worries, you’re very welcome.
If you’d like I can share the V1.01 files to you too. The improvements are also electrical as well as mechanical (eg some caps to smooth out the rollers). Otherwise I anticipate publishing in about 4ish weeks time.
