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Keyboardio joins Arduino AtHeart Program

Zoe RomanoJuly 2nd, 2015

Keyboardino_post

After two and a half years of work and dozens of prototypes, Kaia Dekker and Jesse Vincent have launched Keyboardio Model 01 on Kickstarter: an heirloom-grade mechanical keyboard designed for serious typists.

As you’ll see from the video presentation below, the Model 01 is not just a keyboard. Kaia and Jesse actually re-envisioned the way we type to make it feel great. On top of that it has a beautiful hardwood enclosure and it ships with source code and a screwdriver. The Model 01’s firmware is a regular Arduino sketch you can explore and change yourself.

The project reached its target in the first few hours and you have a few more days to get one!

In the meantime they also joined the Arduino AtHeart Program to make it fully customizable with the Arduino IDE:

We’ve built the Model 01 around the same ATmega32U4 microcontroller that Arduino uses in the Arduino Leonardo. Early on, we figured we’d eventually switch away to a cheaper ARM microcontroller, but then we fell in love with just how easy Arduino makes it for a new programmer to get up to speed. For all intents and purposes, the Model 01’s brain is a regular Arduino. You can update your keyboard from the Arduino IDE. If you want to make your keyboard do something special, there are thousands of Arduino resources online to help you out.

Learn more about Keyboardio on Kickstarter, where you can pre-order it and support Jesse & Kaia, who made it with love (and just a bit of obsession).

keyboardio

Categories:ArduinoFeatured

6 Responses to “Keyboardio joins Arduino AtHeart Program”

  1. DreymaR Says:

    Awesome! But it’s kinda sad to see it with the QWERTY layout.

  2. Aristarco Says:

    Nice! And they have a loud-click option! Also, for @DreymaR: “(The standard keycaps will have QWERTY legends; if you’d prefer blank keycaps you can choose them as an option on your backer survey.) We’re experimenting with a version of blank keycaps with a translucent dot in the middle, so you still get the most out of the nice glowing effects.”

  3. Isaac96 Says:

    Wow! Tripled their goal! As of 7:54 AM 7/3/2015 PST, $389,697!

  4. BlosterCast Says:

    WOW! that key board look awesome but is a bit dificult for me, french, beacause i use the azerty key board. This keyboard is, for me (not nastily, just a critical) just very aesthetics and hard to use exept if you are acustommed to that keyboard for sure!
    my opinion for this key board : 4,5/10 beacause it is very aesthetic and don’t exist in azerty, otherwise, it is beautiful. well done keybordio! Bye Bye evrybody!

  5. static7s Says:

    Looks great. However, I don’t think that the hardwood enclosure would be particularly comfortable for the user’s hands. Perhaps add some sort of cushioning?

  6. macsek Says:

    Nice product.
    I know keyboard layouts are easy to change. Still, you could keep DreymaR and BlosterCast happy offering customer designed keycap labels. That way DreymaR would have his good quality colemak keyboard and BlosterCast his azerty one.

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