My Lily58 Mechanical Keyboard
Quite a few months ago, I started looking at mechanical keyboards on reddit, and took the plunge a few months ago and bought myself one.
Bye-Bye Sculpt
Previously, my keyboard of choice has been the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard and mouse combo. They are a great keyboard, with a comfortable rise and split to relieve the wrist, neck and shoulder pain I was experiencing.
However, the biggest problem is that the wireless usb transceiver is unique to keyboard and mouse it comes with. As such, if you lose or break any of the three bits (four, when you use the included number pad), you need to buy the whole lot again! Not only is this expensive, but is a disgusting waste of plastic.
Bye-Bye Money
My first mechanical keyboard was the Lily58, and is the keeb I’m slowly typing this post with. I purchased it from mechboards.co.uk, and - after making the schoolboy error of soldering the controller boards on upside down - where I bought the second kit from, too. It might have been the solder fumes, but I found the process of building the board quite relaxing; methodically soldering the tiny diodes and sockets into place, and then popping in the switces and caps, to finally tinkering with my layout.
A quick duckduckgo search will find you a build guide, and to flash the controllers, I installed QMK MSYS, the QMK Toolbox, and used the in-browser QMK Configurator to customise my layout.
I originally went for the blank DSA keycaps from mechboards, but found the surface area too small. My current setup is:
- Lily58 pro with acrylic case
Kailh hotswaps with Cherry BrownsOEM-profile thick PBT keycaps in carbon colourway- XDA keycaps in cream/orange/grey
- Kailh Speed Switches - Bronze
It took me a while to get it all soldered correctly, but the split is great to type with, and I’m slowly getting used to the layered layout. I have since bought two staggered split boards, so the worries of expense and plastic waste have not been alleviated, but it feels and sounds a lot nicer to type!
Update: Inspired by someone at work, I’m now using the Colemak-DH Workman layout (qmk files here). Pretty slow going but can see the potential!