A printed case with about 30 degrees of tenting would provide a good bit of space under one side of the board. I did that with a Sofle RGB so I could fit a full PlayStation controller battery under it.
ErgoMechKeyboards
Ergonomic, split and other weird keyboards
Rules
Keep it ergo
Posts must be of/about keyboards that have a clear delineation between the left and right halves of the keyboard, column stagger, or both. This includes one-handed (one half doesn't exist, what clearer delineation is that!?)
i.e. no regular non-split¹ row-stagger and no non-split¹ ortholinear²
¹ split meaning a separation of the halves, whether fixed in place or entirely separate, both are fine.
² ortholinear meaning keys layed out in a grid
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Some useful links
- EMK wiki
- Split keyboard compare tool
- Compare keycap profiles Looking for another set of keycaps - check this site to compare the different keycap profiles https://www.keycaps.info/
- Keymap database A database with all kinds of keymap layouts - some of them fits ergo keyboards - get inspired https://keymapdb.com/
Yeah, at first it seemed quite alright to do with a smaller angle (from 3 to 6 degrees depending on the battery), but now I think it would make the board too complicated. Right now I am trying to get used to sticky mod keys on home row combos (colemak A+S for LGUI, N+I for LCTL) and it seems like I'll be able to remove the inner thumb key in the end.
about a year ago, SouthPawEngineer was playing with and talking about the advantages of coin cell batteries (really easy to get hold of) – should be able to wedge a small coin cell in the space to between the (nominal) ‘Z’ key and the thumb cluster …
EDIT: oh, and it would go on top of the board so no worries about clearance underneath and the coin cell should definitely not be higher than a choc switch + keycap
Thanks, great suggestion! But as it seems it would make use of less common parts (I mean parts that can't be gotten from local shops or ergo keyboard part sellers like splitkb), plus I think the batteries would be too small even compared to the 80mAh batteries used with nice!nanos.
I think you might like the design of the typeractive.xyz corne where the put the battery under the MCU and have headers to give space for it
unfortunately, using a Xiao makes this approach less than ideal. The Xiao's battery connector is a pad on the back, reducing the amount of space a battery can fit.
Since you're going hotswap, you've already got about 3mm of space on the back of the PCB. if you make your case just a tad taller, your battery could fit under the PCB.
I'd like to keep the board as flat as possible, mimicking the TOTEM's case which doesn't add any height. This means I'll have 0.2 mm between the main PCB and the bottom plate, and AFAIK there is no battery that would have the correct size for this.