Just got my Ambient Twilight silent choc switches in! These switches feel incredible. I’d been running tape/floss modded Red Pros up until now. Their sound is similar depending on how well you did the mod, but they always felt disappointingly mushy. The Twilights are even quieter and have a nice satisfying linear feel. They’re definitely quiet enough to start bringing to the office more regularly.

The keyboard’s a variant to last year’s TypeBoy. A pair of modded Game Boy Advance cartridges house a custom PCB, XAIO BLE, shift register, and Sharp Memory Display. (When you don’t accidentally crack one during installation. Whoops.) The Mark II trades the staggered column setup for an ortholinear layout with an offset mod row. The new shape helps channel the handheld vibes a bit better. I went with a PCB stack this time for the case. Partially to try something new, partially to hide the bright Pro Red switches. I’ll have to let the Twilights shine a bit more on the next revision.

I love my Sofle and have had little desire to move down to fewer keys. If I ever get that itch, I can always pop my number row off for a week and see how well I get by.

Long Switch can’t hurt you. Long Switch isn’t real.

Looks great! Love those wooden rests!

Looks nice. A good expensive low-pro for folks who want to go all in without much tinkering or soldering. The thumbs and mods are a little baffling though. If you’re going to include a number row, why not go full maximalist and add a few extra modifiers and make it a traditional 56/58 key layout like the Lily or Sofle? It might look different hands on, but that thumb also seems really far out.

Did you design a schematic or define nets using something like Ergogen? Schematics/Nets provide you with those little white lines defining, “These two pins should connect on the same circuit.” After you’ve traces all the routes to connect your components together, DRC will tell you if you missed a connection, or if two things are connected that shouldn’t be. It’ll also give you warnings like traces being too close to the edge of the board.

There’s nothing quite like seeing a nicely spaced out PCB in KiCAD, only to have the real thing show up in the mail and show you just how close 0.5mm pins with a 0.5mm pitch really are. I’m really happy with how it all came together in the end though!

This keyboard looks great! I love the keycaps you went with here. There’s always something you can tweak next time, but this looks like a really nice first board!