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New keyboard | |
July 06th, 2018 | |
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Today marked the arrival of my newest mechanical keyboard, | |
a Planck from Massdrop. Planck is an ortholinear, minimalist, | |
mechanical keyboard. It's just 4 rows tall (no number row or | |
Fkeys). It supports multiple layers, though, so you can switch | |
between keymaps, or meta-layers, or whatever else floats your | |
boat. Right now I'm running with two layers [0]: | |
- Dvorak | |
- Num-pad & arrows | |
The Planck comes as a kit that you need to assemble. That means | |
laying out the PCB and base plate and popping all the key switches | |
in to place (careful to align the pins just right). Then there was | |
a great deal of soldering. I'm happy to say it went smoothly and | |
I had no issues with my joints whatsoever. The board is then | |
screwed into the milled bottom, some rubber feet are attached, and | |
you're good to go. | |
In my case I also had to flash the firmware to get my sexy layout | |
installed. There was a hiccup there as the software I was using to | |
create the layout had placed the spacebar in the wrong location. | |
Everything worked but the space! I actually took it all apart, | |
remove the switch, resoldered in a replacement, only to find out | |
that it wasn't a hardware issue at all. I changed one setting in | |
my firmware and we're all good again. | |
I'll need to practice using it, especially the layer changes. | |
Here's hoping I pick it up quickly. I suspect this will become my | |
favorite little keyboard buddy. | |
[0] Tomasino's Keyboard Firmware |