Hello from Zürich!

Hello everyone.

I’m a Python programmer who always looked for a perfect keyboard, but was never quite satisfied with what was available. The closest to the ideal was my Logitech UltraX, but it had some problems still. One day I got my hands on an old ALPS-based keyboard, and decided to convert it to USB (and chop off the numpad), and that’s how I realized you can build your own keyboards. The tools I discovered in the process made me try a full mechanical keyboard build, but I was never happy with how thick those keyboards are. Recently I’ve been working with the low-profile chocolate switches, and I feel I’m close to my ideal.

Some of my keyboard projects so far:

As you can see, I’m gravitating towards a minimal, ortolinear, low-profile setup.

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Welcome!

Your builds are impressive to say the least…

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Welcome! The aesthetics of the Flounder intrigue me, though I acknowledge your cautions about the sunken switches and about the spacing.

One q: you say .75" spacing, but isn’t it closer to 19.05 between switch centers? Or are you talking the distance between the switch cutout edges?

It reminds me of the frog design apple tablet/snow white keyboard prototype from 1983:

Of note, the original Apple IIgs keyboard trended toward this aesthetic, but didn’t quite make it to bezel-less. Chryrosran22 reviewed this board.

I would love to recreate this using modern low-pro mech keeb hardware, with the edge-to-edge caps (I think it looks great with the stepped caps). Does anyone know if other examples of this exist, beyond the Flounder?

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Yes, 0.75" is 19.05mm.

:exploding_head:

I don’t know why, but up until now I thought the standard key spacing was 1". I guess that would be quite big, indeed.