KLOR is 34 keys split columnar staggered keyboard made by GEIST. I built it with Nice!Nano and without an OLED screen. Been regularly taking it with me to the office.
Geist’s KLOR might still be the best MX split on the market. Has everything one could wish for.
I can’t begin to comprehend what might be involved in transitioning from a “normal “ keyboard to something like this.
I think once you accept that standard keyboards are laid out as they are just by convention and nothing else, and that moving to a new layout will take a bit of time, the prospect of having a keyboard where everything is exactly where you want it to be becomes quite thrilling. This is actually my first bit of real typing using Colemak DH. It is excruciatingly slow to touch type but I didn’t know it at all two weeks ago. In two more weeks time I’ll have my first split keyboard in my hands. So it’s definately doable…
The transition for me personally was fortunately pretty smooth due to having touch typed properly on a normal row staggered board. My first columnar staggered keyboard was the 3W6. It of course felt different and your muscle memories have to slightly adapt but it was worthwhile with the added comfort a columnar staggered board in a split layout provides. So if you are already touch typing properly I think you get used to it just fine. The harder part at the beginning will probably be finding the right keymap since having fewer keys using mod tap, combos and layers will be mandatory :D.
Haha, honestly not nearly as bad as you might think! The amazing thing about the brain is that it’s incredibly good at learning when it feels a strong need to learn something. For me, a couple of days of trying to keep up on Discord is enough time to learn a new layout and be proficient.
How’s the other side look? Seems like this would be 36 key?
Yep, that’s correct! That’s just one half of it so it’s indeed a 36 key keyboard - sorry for any confusions :)
I didn’t know it came in a 36 key variant. That’s pretty interesting!
I want a keyboard like this but I want it prebuilt 😂.
Is this… half of the keyboard? Or do you have a mode switch or something so you type the mirrored key? What kind of WPM can you get? It’s super cool, it hasn’t occurred to me that you could have a one handed keyboard
I’m not OP, and one-haned keyboards definitely exist (I can’t remember the name, but I think there’s even an 8-key complete layout). However, since they said 34-key split, I’d assume the other half’s in the bag, or otherwise offscreen.
I have two questions:
- How useful do you find the encoder? All the other keyboards I’ve seen with encoders seem badly placed, but is yours close enough to the resting thumb position that you can use it without moving from the home row?
- Where did you get the carrying case? I’ve got a corne, but really just leave it at home and use the laptop keyboard when I’m elsewhere because I don’t like just leaving it loose in my bag.
Thanks for your questions:
- The encoder is indeed placed in a way that allows my finger to not move away from the home row and use my thumbs to navigate the knob.
- I got the custom carrying sleeve from Mechfashion from a small private group buy we did. But not sure if the owner still offers customized keyboard sleeves. The domain and business was moved to deskpads. The sleeve provides enough cushion and protection to give me some peace of mind when throwing it in my bag.
I just worked out that a rotary controller can be mapped onto a mouse scroll wheel, which suddenly makes a lot of sense. I’ve been sitting here thinking “why would I want a volume knob? Why would I want two?” Is there anything else I am missing about rotary controllers?
Hehe, yeah you can map it to different things. I like to use it for ctrl+left and ctrl+right to quickly jump back and forth between words and also ctrl+pg up and ctrl+pg dn to quickly navigate between browser tabs.
My mapping is encoder: scroll wheel ctrl+encoder: horizontal scroll layer shift+encoder: switch desktops
This looks amazing. Nice job! Can you tell us which filament you used for the case?
Thank you! I used Fillamentum - PLA Crystal Clear Amethyst Purple for the case :)
