cyrusds / customdactylkeeb

Project documenting my experience creating a custom Dactyl Keyboard with a trackball included

Custom Dactyl Keyboard with trackball

I've been getting into the small but strong keyboard community, and one sect of the large community is interested in these types of ergo keyboards. I've never really used or thought about having one before this project. However, it seemed like a fun project to combine my current education in College at CU Boulder as well as my own interest in custom keyboards recently.

Research Beforehand

I had a ton of initial research before even deciding to do this project. One thing that pushed me over the edge of doing this whole custom project was wanting to have a trackball. Being able to use a keyboard and a mouse as an all-in-one ergonomic design really sold me on the idea. Or at least, the challenge and interesting results would hopefully not disappoint.

In the end, I decided to utilize the design provided by the dactl keyboard community https://github.com/adereth/dactyl-keyboard I noticed this was a bit of an older project so I decided to make my own updated version, including a different controller board setup and also some new capabilities which required some design retooling.

Parts List (not fully complete)

As I wanted to update the older project shown above, I opted for some more modern parts, shown below.

Beginnings designs and Modifications to original model

Initially, the plan was to design a model with a trackpad integrated to the dactyl layout and simply print it. However, 3D Modeling the addition proved to be a time consuming effort and the initial design simply had the trackball too far from ones hands, in order to be ergonomically comfortable. So, I had to re-design the 3D model from scratch again multiple times, before even printing the first design. The first design that actually made the cut to be printed is below Shown with printed layers. Shown as 3d model only.

Notice that there are slots in the hemisphere to accomodate for bearings to be placed. This is taken as a suggestion from another community member who suggested to include them for smoother trackpad scrolling. Not sure if this will stay on my model, but it does seem worth trying his suggestion.

Inherently, changing the top plate as shown above, raises a new issue. We need a new bottom plate to accomodate for the newly added large.. awkwardly sized... hemisphere. Doing this was a huge pain overall, but fortunately doing additive processes to STL files is a bit more forgiving than removing pieces of a model.

Wiring

Adding a PCB to the shell

Early Versions

Final Product

Future improvements

Difficulties and Recommendations

Printing

License

©2021 Cyrus Sowdaey Provided files and info are for free use to anyone, regarding modification and reproduction.