How I built a keyboard by hand
In this technical retrospective (2016), @rhinoceraptor shares practical architectural lessons learned from running, scaling, or migrating production software under lean constraints.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Defaulting to simpler architectures (such as monolithic frameworks, SQLite, or managed VPS) prevents early engineering bankruptcy.
Evaluating true compute and egress costs reveals that high cloud bills can often be slashed by 80%+ through judicious re-platforming.
Code you write at 2 AM as a solo engineer must be easy to debug six months later without complex microservice dependencies.
Community Debate Themes:
HN engineers debated the tradeoffs between cloud convenience and raw server economics, database indexing strategies, and resisting premature architectural complexity.
CATEGORY Frugal Engineering →
HISTORICAL ERA Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019)
COMMUNITY SCORE 424 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 149 comments
Exist a whole of crazy sub-culture about this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/ ↗
https://geekhack.org/ ↗
https://www.massdrop.com/mechanical-keyboards ↗
I'm almost build one, because I need a replacement for my MS ergonomic Keyboard:
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=79603.msg2053482 ↗
In short, MS hate me. He refuse to build a mechanical keyboard and also build the most nice Ergo (to me) but each iteration is far less durable. My actual one have several keys fade-out, and the palm rest is kaput. The original one, was rock-solid:
https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-A11-00337-Natural-Keyboard-Elite/dp/B0000642RX/ref=sr_1_7?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1476133766&sr=1-7&keywords=microsoft%2Bergonomic%2Bkeyboard&th=1 ↗
(I have see it at around US 300!)
So, I'm in the weird spot of:
- I like this keyb too much
- I can buy a more durable, but PS-2 antique, version
- I can buy a more up-to-date but cord-less (hate to recharge stuff!) and I'm confident it will break faster
- I can buy from the mech community, but do you remember? This community is CRAZY, and the options get weird and weirder!
- I can buy a commercial gaming keyboard and make my life easy. But I wanna ergo.
- I can build it myself, but do it curved is challenging, and I need to buy a custom keyset, so I need to convince like 20-30 people to do it so it not cost a eye.
Yep, this is nuts. I'm already > 1 year holding off this project, waiting for a reasonable compromise
(Not get wrong: I can settle for less. Is not that I can't, is that I wish a nicer option!) ---
The options in this space (Ergo+ Mech+ NOT CRAZY) are very limited. VERY.
You can get stuff like
https://shop.keyboard.io/ ↗
or even more popular
https://www.massdrop.com/buy/infinity-ergodox ↗
But that keyb is a example of how crazy people are. Note that is not only a weird layout, have less keys than a normal keyboard.
I could buy it instantly if a least is a "normal" tenkey-less.
Right know, is SUPER-HOT to make the keyboard with the less possible amount of keys, where 60% is like the most popular, like this
https://www.massdrop.com/buy/kbp-v60-plus-mini-mechanical-keyboard ↗
This mean a lot of material to DIY is biased torwards 60%.
Have to give a shoutout to keyboard.io - https://shop.keyboard.io ↗. Backing this project and watching the process and creation of this keyboard has been very rewarding. They are creating band new keycaps, not just modifying the inlays - but the full custom shapes as well. Watching the process of getting mass fabrication setup in China has been especially interesting as well.
One quality example blog post: http://blog.keyboard.io/post/148699005129/day-420-hinges-and-feet-and-keycaps-and-pcbs ↗
I mean, sure, this is pretty neat, but par for the course with the excellent projects posted every day at sites like deskthority.net and geekhack.org. I'm surprised this one made the front page. It's neat but not the first of its kind.
There are folks on these sites who are re-creating IBM capacitive buckling spring keyboards "from scratch": new molds for all the components. Also, keyboard.io is a keyboard project complete from scratch (except for the switches) from some friends.
Kudos to the OP for building a keyboard! It's great fun and very instructive. Head to the forums I linked above if you'd like to see more.
I made my own keyboard in college for the simple reason that I couldn't afford to buy one. You couldn't get one at Goodwill for $1.99 in those days :-)
I salvaged the keys from some IBM device. Drilled a bunch of holes in a fiberglass board, mounted the keys in the holes, connected them in an XY grid with diodes, and used a 6800 processor to poll the grid to see which key was pressed, and send the corresponding ASCII value to a serial port.
It was a simple design, and worked well. Later, I connected a 6845 video controller chip, some code, and a display, and voila! a VT52 clone.
Sadly, the thing got lost in one of my many moves.
OP should talk to https://twitter.com/adereth ↗ (see: http://adereth.github.io/blog/2014/04/09/3d-printing-with-clojure/ ↗) and have pure fun together.
ps: https://twitter.com/adereth/status/784870134502465536 ↗