Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Keyboardio Kickstarter is Live


Back in August, a Plover fan asked the Keyboardio Twitter account if their keyboard would have true N-key rollover. They said they were working on it, and asked us how many keys of rollover we needed. I told them 16 or more would probably do the trick.

According to their Kickstarter page, they have succeeded:

"True N-key rollover (NKRO)

For a variety of reasons, many USB keyboards limit you to pressing 6 keys (plus modifiers) at once. Most of us would never notice this limitation, but an intrepid few really, really need to be able to hit more than six keys at once."

I'm not sure if that was a specific reference to the Plover community, but regardless, the thought is very much appreciated.

The column-based layout and tripod compatibility are certainly ideal for steno. I'm not sure the big ridges between the thumb keys will make for the most comfortable vowel writing, but they don't look sharp enough to be a dealbreaker.

At $300 per keyboard, it's certainly on the pricier side for a Plover-compatible keyboard that's not explicitly intended for steno, but if you anticipate a lot of mixed use, don't want to keep both qwerty and steno keyboards at the ready, and don't want to build your own Ergodox, the Keyboardio Model 1 is certainly an attractive specimen. The Kickstarter ends in 29 days, so you've got about a month to decide!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

16-key rollover? We only have 10 fingers :P

Unknown said...

And each finger can press two keys at a time.

kitsteno said...

Very, very cool. Looks way better than the kinesis advantage which I was not able to adapt to. I wonder about the stroke depth -- perhaps that is adjustable.
I might get two!

Cole Cunningham said...
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