Behind the scenes #207

Keyboard Builders’ Digest / Editorial

Behind the scenes #207

Behind the scenes with the February change rankings, Womier SK80 Professional assessment, Swap Quiz, open-source and industrial initiatives, keyboard artwork, meetups, and many others.

dovenyi
Revealed March 9, 2026

Hey, what’s up everybody!

Welcome again for one more recap and behind-the-scenes write-up – with some cool initiatives from the DIY keyboard scene, but in addition promising closed-source industrial initiatives.

If you’re new to kbd.information, you may learn how this began out and what that is all about these days. For those who like what you see, subscribe to the publication (free) and donate some bucks to maintain this in any other case free and ad-free undertaking alive.

Chef’s alternative

For those who solely have time for a few posts, begin with testing these:

Some posts price sharing

• Listed below are February’s high mechanical switches, the neighborhood’s favorites primarily based on vendor gross sales knowledge. For those who’ve already seen this on the weekend, I’ve up to date the publish with Divinikey’s numbers.

• Evaluation: The tri-mode wi-fi Womier SK80 Professional comes with Nice Wave overdose, together with an identical mouse pad and wrist relaxation.

• Dane Lipscombe‘s Koumori is a low-profile unibody cut up keyboard with trackpad.

• Scybin‘s Chitin is an open-source wi-fi cut up with a tiny trackball.

• A spartan cut up keyboard with some appreciable pinky offset: Underset by humanplayer2.

• Nick Coughlin‘s Floor Management 40 is a 40% open-source ortho keyboard designed for speedy prototyping.

• Two Sweep derivatives with splay: RAII by unspecworks – wired or wi-fi.

• Yuburoll‘s DASIC is a symmetrical Alice-style cut up keyboard with reversible PCB.

• A brand new ergo keycap profile for columnar layouts: Bobslei by Beelb0u.

• Nonetheless only a render and a shell of a github repo, however anyway: etzee by Niola Secerovski aka secersh.

• Galileo is low-pro ortho PCB by Obiebousky.

• PlaketXL by Flatbrains!. Many pictures within the final couple of days, this one is from thibounet‘s publish.

• Fern by Acrobatic_Plan9973. A 34-key Cherry ULP cut up keyboard with dongle charging dock. It costs utilizing pogo pins.

• Ercham MK1 – a one-handed recreation controller within the works. By Adventurous_Tie.

• 0.4 and 0.5 by ikakus. Not a lot, simply two pictures, however the construction is attention-grabbing.

• BANDIT is a monoblock offset cut up cyberdeck by DSCF_prog.

• MeKaBu – a collaborative effort pushing the boundaries with ZMK to comprehend a modular system.

• Qwertron by keypresslife is a typing website with long-term enchancment in thoughts (by way of r/mk).

• Northern Chorder is an open-source chording keyboard firmware + GUI follow app.

• In line with this tear-down by Sam Holland, the Teenage Engineering EP-40 synthesizer options off-the-shelf TTC low-pro switches to realize pressure-sensitive capabilities.

• These Lego keycaps by Unusual-Alfalfa311/TheBike560 work nicely with Lego minifigures and brics. Information on makerworld.

• This Solar 1 workstation board is Mikademus‘ candidate for worst navigation cluster placement. Properly, I am not going to go to my attic now, however…

• A pleasant beafy 1800 one: Goupil Golf. “Right here’s an unique Goupil Golf keyboard, a french firm who used to make flashy machines within the 80’s” – RaspberryRare3348. However thas was manufactured in Germany.

Ready for assessment: The magnetic Dareu Cool68, a purple KiiBOOM Pahntom 98 with an additional Planetmars Pixelpop Arcade keycap set, Epomaker Glyph, Moergo Go60, Jezail Funder’s Jiffy75 (marketing campaign begins tomorrow), Whalebone stand, a Redragon 75%.

For all of the donation choices take a look at the donation web page!

Meetup database

The meetup database serves as each a calendar and an archive, so be at liberty to ship me upcoming occasions and even ones from the latest previous to make this assortment as complete as doable.

Just lately added:

• Colorado MechMeets March 2026 meetup, March 21, Erie, CO, US
• Blooming Into Keebs, April 12, Irvine, CA, US
• Iowa Keyboard Meetup 2026, Could 2, Des Moines, IA, US
• Colorado MechMeets Could 2026 Meetup (Inaugural Southern meetup), Could 31, Citadel Pines, CO, US

Vendor information & Reductions

Be at liberty to make use of the KBDNEWS low cost code at 194 keyboard outlets worldwide! And don’t hesitate to report any points! 🙂

No new outlets or updates to the database of keyboard distributors these previous weeks, however listed below are some vendor information anyway:

Developments

• Swap Quiz – Reply some fast inquiries to slim down lots of of change fashions from the change database.

This undertaking is principally a second interface for the database, extra for newbies preferring a guided tour strategy. That mentioned, creating this concerned fixing a number of inconsistencies in tagging, plus some new options not current within the database: non-silent, non-lubed filters, Choc V1 vs V2 vs Gateron LP differentiation, and many others.

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That is all for at this time. Thanks for checking by. As all the time: Continue to learn and constructing!

Till subsequent time,
Tamás

Revealed on Mon ninth Mar 2026. Featured in KBD #207.

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