UHK starts crowdfunding round

[JBert]

The creator himself has posted about creating the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard before, but now they actually started their crowdfunding capaign over at Crowd Supply.

Slightly interesting point: it won't use Cherry switches but a mix of Greetech and/or Gateron. Seems talks didn't went too well...

[Muirium]

I find it an ugly duckling, to be honest, but having pull quotes from Engadget and NBC means they've got someone effective in marketing already. So it may well take off anyway.

Gateron is a better choice than Cherry these days. For the company accidentally at the epicentre of the mechanical / gaming keyboard renaissance, Cherry's making no friends whatsoever with the braindead exclusives they keep signing with Razor. The China based, yet MX centric industry is quite rightly asking Fuck me? No, fuck you!

[JBert]

Cherry making exclusive deals with Razor? I believe you must be thinking of Corsair because Razor were the ones touting their "superior shorter-travel switches" which turned out to be some random clone.

As for design: tastes and colours I guess. While I'm not too much convinced of the LCD or hard to find keycap sizes, the fact that we're seeing a new design for a split keyboard is interesting.

[Muirium]

Thanks for the correction. All those gamer brands get hazy to me, seeing as I've never bought any of their stuff. They seem to fear much the same thing: people consider their wares to be, well, much the same things! Which is why they're forever up to switch exclusives and, failing that, pretending.

A new split ergo mech, meanwhile, is always welcome. No confusing the UHK for yet another gaudy Filco wannabe.

[scottc]

I'm glad to see that the UHK guys took on board all of our constructive feedback! /s

Seems like it was just a sales pitch, through and through. I won't be picking up one of these guys at that price and with these problems, though it does seem rather nice.

[Grond]

This could have been so much better with just a few tweaks. Anyway the coiled cable seems a better solution than the retractible thing they showed before, also the build seems pretty solid from the video. I still won't get one mostly beacuse I find the case ugly, but I hope they succeed and then someday make a better 2.0 version

[kbdfr]

Fully programmable on four layers
Now that at least should become standard.

But what they call ISO is just short left Shift + 1 key instead of large left Shift, the Enter key remains ANSI - well, almost…



…"almost", because the keys at the utmost right are shortened by .5u:
- BackSpace is 1.5u instead 2.0u,
- |\ is 1u instead of 1.5u (in my opinion the only sensible change in that column),
- Enter is 1.75u instead of 2.25u,
- Shift is 2.25u instead of 2.75u,
- Control is… oh wait! Control is not shorter, but larger: 2u instead of 1.25u.

But, well…
Fully programmable on four layers

[JBert]

the keys at the utmost right are shortened by .5u:
- BackSpace is 1.5u instead 2.0u,
- |\ is 1u instead of 1.5u (in my opinion the only sensible change in that column),
- Enter is 1.75u instead of 2.25u,
- Shift is 2.25u instead of 2.75u,
- Control is… oh wait! Control is not shorter, but larger: 2u instead of 1.25u.

Indeed, the absurdity of this layout only hit me today: the Enter key I could live with, but I expect the \| to be left of the enter key in an ISO layout.

[Grond]

Also, you're pretty much stuck with the stock keycaps. Bad choice.

[pcaro]

I like brave people and alternative layouts! Stop that nosense big spacebars in new keyboards please...

[Muirium]

Note that we aren't criticising the spacebar(s). That's a given on a split keyboard.

Tthe absurdity of this layout only hit me today: the Enter key I could live with, but I expect the \| to be left of the enter key in an ISO layout.

Well, as Scott said, they had their fingers in their ears when they asked for our input. So I expect that's how they went about making all their other mistakes too. When all you can hear is people saying how awesome you are, you know you were born for advertising, not development.

[mondalaci]

Hi guys,

First up, thanks for starting this thread and sorry for the late reply.

We do listen to community feedback but cannot please everybody.

It was a deliberate decision to make the UHK half unit smaller and put the 6 key on the left half to make it more symmetrical. Sorry that it results in 2 more non-standard keys than necessary.

The UHK being smaller, it'd also result in a very narrow L-shaped Enter and many people like this combination. Opinions seem to vary a lot.

Have a great weekend!
Laci - Lead developer of the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard

[Ray]

firstly I like how they didn't implement the narrow ISO enter. To call the resulting layout ISO seems strange though. To be fair, they call it half-ISO at times.
Here's a question though. Can the additional key be used as a Fn/Mod key? They say fully programmable, but on the fast reading through the campaign, I didn't find what fully means to them. It probalby means that key can be used for any function, in which case I like it - for symmetries sake. Moving my pinky down a row and out half a key is perfect for a Modkey imho (if I'm on standard stagger).

And how is backspace, \|, return and right shift two keys? I can see the symmetry argument, but why are customers paying 200+ bucks expected to stay with the default ABS keycaps.
I also like the position of the 6 key, but cannot see how that relates to non-standard keysizes.

The intro video was fun to watch. 90% marketing as expected, filled with things to laugh about: Hands moving at mediocre speed on the board, a pinkie position that almost looks painful and turning the halves inwards are my top candidates for not looking further into it. The reviewer that didn't state an own opinion but simply repeats their arguments was also entertaining.

Also the comment above is fun as it says "Hello community, you are wrong. We do listen to you. Sad you don't notice."

[mondalaci]

firstly I like how they didn't implement the narrow ISO enter. To call the resulting layout ISO seems strange though. To be fair, they call it half-ISO at times.

Calling it half-ISO would make sense but it might not make sense for most users. After all, the picture shows the layout. Let us think about this.

Here's a question though. Can the additional key be used as a Fn/Mod key? They say fully programmable, but on the fast reading through the campaign, I didn't find what fully means to them. It probalby means that key can be used for any function, in which case I like it - for symmetries sake. Moving my pinky down a row and out half a key is perfect for a Modkey imho (if I'm on standard stagger).

What you asked is possible and it's a great idea to explain this. So much so that we've just added information about configuration possibilities to the Ultimate Configurability section of our campaign page.

And how is backspace, \|, return and right shift two keys? I can see the symmetry argument, but why are customers paying 200+ bucks expected to stay with the default ABS keycaps.

We can't do anything about this at this point. This design decision has its pros and cons. We plan to sell keycap sets separately at the very least.

I also like the position of the 6 key, but cannot see how that relates to non-standard keysizes.

It doesn't. I just thought I mention it because it's layout realted, too.

The intro video was fun to watch. 90% marketing as expected, filled with things to laugh about: Hands moving at mediocre speed on the board, a pinkie position that almost looks painful and turning the halves inwards are my top candidates for not looking further into it. The reviewer that didn't state an own opinion but simply repeats their arguments was also entertaining.

Some of the parts of the video are painful for me, too. It was definitely rushed and we should rerecord multiple scenes. John states his own opinion, though. We didn't give words into his mouth.

Also the comment above is fun as it says "Hello community, you are wrong. We do listen to you. Sad you don't notice."

This is how you percieved it. I wanted to make it clear that we listen to feedback and justify our decisions.

[JBert]

Ugh, I can't make my mind up about this one.

Now they've introduced snap-on modules which would make most of my non-trackpoint keyboards obsolete: https://www.crowdsupply.com/ugl/ultimat ... dates/1929

[Muirium]

Modules are a great idea in the abstract. A real crowd-pleaser: include whatever features you like, none of the other stuff you don't! It leaves a lot of design choices in the user's hands instead.

Implementing them is a whole other story. Let's see how well they pull it off.

[rpilgrim]

UHK is funded with 6 days to go ) https://www.crowdsupply.com/ugl/ultimat ... g-keyboard

[KRKS]

So I guess now we have the closest thing to Razer making a 60%, "features" and heavy marketing included.

[JBert]

Meh, I joined the fray.

At least they share their designs. You can now look at the firmware, the on-the-fly programming tool or the electronics files at https://github.com/UltimateHackingKeyboard.

[mondalaci]

Thank you very much for your support, JBert! I have yet to document those repos for others to easily hack on them.

[KRKS]

Okay, I understand that you don't believe people would buy your stuff without riding on HHKB name, comparisons and statements carefully selected to make your board look good and constant marketing, but could you at least leave the wiki neutral?

[wiki]Ultimate_Hacking_Keyboard[/wiki]

It's a very obvious sales pitch.

[chzel]

KRKS is right on point...
Can someone more versed in the wiki-voodoo edit the page to make it as objective as possible, and less like an advert?

[vivalarevolución]

KRKS is right on point...
Can someone more versed in the wiki-voodoo edit the page to make it as objective as possible, and less like an advert?

Somebody call Beardsmore and bring him back.

[kbdfr]

KRKS is right on point...
Can someone more versed in the wiki-voodoo edit the page to make it as objective as possible, and less like an advert?

Made some changes

[Muirium]

I endorse this edit.

You can tell I didn't do it because A. The Wiki and B. No griping about their shameless freeloading on the HHKB's name.

[hoggy]

Current version looks good.

I didn't see the original version, but I'm a bit disappointed with uhk's behaviour over this.

[chzel]

There you go
Thank you kbdfr for the edit.

And while on the subject, if anyone could make a small concise tutorial on wiki editing (or can link to one), it'd be great and much appreciated.

[KRKS]

I used to write on a wiki a few years ago, I'd have to find time to catch up and remember some things, so maybe someone more fresh? Anyone?

[JBert]

I didn't see the original version, but I'm a bit disappointed with uhk's behaviour over this.

Blame rpilgrim, it appears he (?) created the page from the marketing blurb: http://deskthority.net/w/index.php?titl ... on=history

I can't find someone similar to his username in the UGL team roster so the team might as well have nothing to do with this.


@mondalaci: there has been an upload of http://deskthority.net/wiki/File:UHK_Ke ... dd-ons.png, are the images on the UHK page also CC-BY-SA like the footer proclaims?

[JBert]

And while on the subject, if anyone could make a small concise tutorial on wiki editing (or can link to one), it'd be great and much appreciated.

We use the same software as Wikipedia so you could refer to their Help page.

Their Getting started page lists the basics, also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... Formatting.