There are many people these days who are working from home or they have a home office setup. A majority of peoples day can be at a computer especially those working in tech and at home. This means having the right equipment that won’t wear you out and having equipment that will make you more productive is a necessity. Building a keyboard should be one of those equipment items you should build yourself and it is very easy. Building a keyboard is pretty budget friendly so if you just got a new job and get a stipend you should build your own custom keyboard. Your fingers and hands for sure will thank you later after not having wear down from typing on a cheap membrane keyboard.
When building a keyboard you first need to get the body of the keyboard which most of the ones you would want already come with switches in it you can keep those for later if you want to switch back but the main thing you want to look for is a mechanical keyboard that is “hot swap” this means that you do not have to do any soldering and it is just a simple remove and replace process. After that you want to look for the functionality. You can get wired keyboard for very cheap and keep a budget under $70 easily with it wired or you can get it wireless and those can range with new keycaps and switches at around $100-$250 depending on how fancy you want it. If you have a really high budget you can get custom everything and that can get near $1000 but we will not be focusing on that today.
After you have the body of the keyboard you need to buy the switches. Most common mechanical hot swap keyboards use a 3 or 5 pin design so you want to buy which ever pin count your keyboard has. Many will accept both but the other thing is if you have LED’s in your keyboard you need to find out if the lights are at the top of each socket or the bottom. They classify these as north facing (top) or south facing (bottom). Most budget friendly keyboards that are hot swap will be north facing. You then pick the switch based on pressing weight, actuation distance (push distance to register keystroke) and what sound it makes. There are 3 main types of sounds/presses clicky, tactile, and linear. Linear are very smooth and have no bump. Tactile is going to be more of a clack with a bump when you press and then clicky is well clicky and you feel a bump as well. I prefer linear because it feels like I can type longer as well as they are more quiet and quick.
Last thing you need are keycaps. This is all preference but you can get very cool design keycaps or pudding keycaps which shine more lights. If you do not do lights , do a cool design. There are 3 main types of keycaps. ABS which is a cheaper plastic and better for lights but they do show a lot of fingerprint shine over time, PBT which is higher grade plastic and more grippy which does not show shine over time and last being ceramic. I use double-shot PBT for mine as they add great texture and don’t wear out as fast but it does hurt lighting but a great keyboard body to start anyways should help.
Thursday, November 21, 2024
