pi500 and pi500+

The 500/500+ keyboards run QMK on a RP2040. So you could just change the mappings in QMK if the particular layout bothers you. Presumably that means you can also rework the LED behaviour if you want too.

For the power button, I think it's just a regular sized keycap? Buy an extra unlabelled keycap, or reuse another keycap with a sticker? (do you actually need it to be labelled, or can you just 'know' that button is the power button?)

I assume if you buy a full 102/etc key set then there will be some keycaps left over with one you can use for the power key. OK it might have the decimal point or something printed on it, but can you live with that?

Seems like a big project to DIY your own thing where some minor tweaks to the existing design might do it.

Theo

I keep meaning to try that on my Durgod K320, but it never feels like a good day to potentially brick my keyboard ...

Backup keyboards are available...

On the Pi 500 the microcontroller is on the mainboard, on the 500+ it's on the keyboard PCB. You would be advised to have a secondary keyboard plugged into USB (or connecting to the Pi via SSH) in case something goes wrong with the flash and the keyboard stops working.

Theo

Lots of food for thought. Thanks for the reply and thoughtful alternatives.

It would, indeed, be a huge project especially for a custom wireless mechanical build. Most barebone offerings are wired keyboards so I was going down the rabbit hole.

I mean, it could be rewarding in the end but it would be a long development period for a working solution.

I will explore your suggestions.

Then forget about the 500/500+ form factor.

Get a Pi 5 and a case with built in NVMe (Argon40's Neo 5 or One V5 for full size HDMIs) and stick it behind the TV or monitor. You can then use whatever keyboard you want, either wired or wireless. I use both full size wireless, or mini wireless with integral track pads.

---druck

I'm a fan of the wedge form factor, so the 400/500/500+ is in my criteria. It's easy enough to duct tape a machine behind a monitor for a poor-man imac.

I will get a 500+ once it's no longer sold out where it is priced fairly. And I will go down the rabbit hole of my own custom build at leisure.

Well, yesterday I spilled half a pint of water* into my keyboard, so I had to disassemble the Durgod (which was a real bastard involving half a dozen lolly sticks and four credit cards) to dry it out.

Before re-assembling it, I decided to risk flashing QMK, I have to say it was one of the least friendly flashing processes of any device I've ever done, but I got there in the end, without bricking it.

The end result is impressive, it now allows me to do all the things I wished the Durgod customisation would have allowed at the time I bought the keyboard, but turned out to not be pssible. The customised "layers" are all stored natively within the keyboard, not using any runtime o/s driver.

Oh. many years ago I left a computer by an open window in Johannesburg. And a thunderstorm soaked it through. I simply let it dry out for a day.

Ah, so not water then?

In such cases simply submerge the thing in reasonably fresh water., shake it a bit and leave it to dry... . Water doesn't harm electronics that are not switched on...

I wasn't convinced that washing a nice-ish mechanical keyboard would do the keyswitches much good ...

It's a funny thing, but people associate water with rust, and rightly so., But it takes a lot of water AND air to do rust.

Iron in oxygen free water does not rust. One of the experiments we did at school...

Key switches are gold plated bronze most likely. Washing is fine...just the springs to worry about...

Good moaning, Officer Crabtree!

How do you make some? And how long does it stay oxygen-free?

Interesting. How do you like your Durgod? I've been thinking about getting a keyboard with QMK firmware. I've only learned of its existence recently and played with it on an 8-key mini keyboard. I'm interested in having some macros in the keyboard in a convenient way. My current fnatic one requires macros to be typed in.

I managed to put in some self-defined macros in that mini-keyboard but those went right into the firmware. So just curious, do you have macros in your Durgod with QMK? The kind you can just easily copy-paste in and just as easily remove when not needed any longer?

Just put some iron in it and seal the container.

John

The way we did it in school chemistry was to put the nail in the water, boil the water and seal the test tube with beeswax.

The control was a nail dropped in tap water and not sealed

A pretty definitive experiment. My school didn't teach science, it reproduced every one of the most significant experiments of the last 400 years if it was practicable. Science was never taught as 'true' It was taught as 'what people thought after doing this experiment'

Pleased with it, physically it feels good, I have the TKL version to save space.

After the initial load of the QMK firmware (bit of a learning process involving opening it up, shorting a couple of tracks while plugging-in, then loading zadig driver, rebooting it into firmware loader mode) you have two ways to create the config files for it

either a web GUI that allows redefining each key, on multiple "layers" with certain hotkeys to swap into those layers, that results in a new binary file to flash into it, the procedure being much simpler after the first load.

or you can customise a keymap usimg a programming language, compile then load it the same way, I think you'd need to use this method if you want to make multi-character macro strings per key (with e.g. Fn as the trigger for them).

I haven't needed to use the compiler yet, just the GUI, e.g. without a numpad I couldn't enter Alt-codes, so I've added a layer to allow substituting number0-9 as numpad0-9m I've also mapped the media play/pause/stop/ff/rew keys.

I think it can only write to the keyboard's flash when you put it into firmware mode, so probably not as easy as that ...

Perhaps QMK could partition the flash,to allow storing the macro translations separate from the firmware/keymap?

Yes, I thought that would be a way but I haven't found any mention anywhere that something like that is supported. Partitioning probably needs support from the flash itself too. Another way would be to store them in RAM but I suppose a lot of these microcontrollers used on keyboards are really limited on the amount of that. And they'd be volatile then and RAM probably isn't accessible from USB directly so that'd need some support at both ends of the USB cable. Then again, in this day and age volatile storage has an appeal.

I kinda thought macros are a popular feature. My particular interest is in putting wifi passwords into things that support a USB keyboard but aren't really computers. I thought online gamers might use text macros too since some keyboards have this macro feature but I guess gamers mainly use voice.