It’s finally happening. The Mantis v1.0 prototypes are coming together and have been in daily use since mid-June. I proved all the PCB features for wired builds with RP2040-based controllers and per-key RGB, as well as wireless ones with nice!nano controller and a nice!view display. Both variants use a PMW-3610 trackball sensor on a custom sensor PCB with a VIK-compatible interface and run ZMK. To make the sensor work with RP2040 controllers I needed to dig pretty deep into Zephyr and I’m working on contributing the patches to the Zephyr project.

On July 11 I showed off my new prototypes as well as the previous versions of Mantis at the Canadian Mechanical Keyboard Meetup to some fellow keyboard nerds in person. The reactions were overwhelmingly positive.

Already earlier this spring I had decided to start a company (HEXergoN Inc.) to make Mantis kits and keyboards more easily accessible. My friend Ambika is joining me as co-founder, who is handling a lot of the administration, website, social media, supplier relationships and eventually customer relationships so that I can focus on the technical and design side of it. We are now officially out of stealth mode and we expect to be ready to launch in the fall of this year with a first limited production run.

A lot of work remains to address some more mechanical and fit issues with the trackball bearings and gasket mounting system, make the case easier to print with FDM printers, streamline the build process, design packaging, and establish a supply chain.

You can follow us on our website, hexergon.ca. I’ll keep the blog there updated as we get closer to launch and may post here occasionally. I’ll be happy to answer your questions in the comments below.