Using The Corne Split Keyboard For Half A Year

Due to RSI from a combination of programming and sports, I've been using split keyboards for almost 20 years, and Kinesis Advantage Pro keyboards (somehow I own three of these) for over a decade before that. My RSI is long gone (or at least in remission) now, but I'll never willingly return to normal keyboards. The big advantages in addition to the ones stated in the article:

• Your pinky fingers really aren't made to simultaneously stretch and press keys, and traditional keyboards put a large amount of repetitive stress on your pinkies. Keyboards that allow you to minimize pinky stretches and stresses make an enormous difference. So if you get a split keyboard, try to stay small, i.e. don't ever go wider than 6 key columns per hand, so that your pinky only has to move one column at the most. (Your forefinger can deal with a bit more stress, but there's simply no reason to: No keyboards that I've ever seen have more than one column movement for the forefinger.) Additionally, limit the vertical travel, e.g. 3 rows of keys would be ideal, and 4 rows may be acceptable if the additional one is a seldom-used top row.

• The "home row" concept definitely reduces RSI. It's part and parcel of the above bullet, in that your hands never have to move, and at most one finger (pinky or forefinger) has to shift at most one column. Enabling the home row concept often puts more work on the thumbs (e.g. layer switching, common keys like space and enter, etc.), but from my own experience, the thumbs are happy to take the abuse. In order of how-much-abuse-a-finger-can-take, it roughly follows the order of the fingers, beginning with the thumb; on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being heavy duty: thumb=8, forefinger=4, middle-finger=3, ring-finger=1, pinky=2. For some people, pinky=1, which means you should reduce the max columns from 6 down to 5.

• A functioning track ball in the keyboard is a huge bonus for eliminating hand movement, but only one company has pulled it off successfully (from a technical perspective), but they couldn't make it work successfully from a profitability POV. That company was KeyMouse, with their KeyMouse Track product: https://www.keymouse.com/catalog/keymouse/keymouse-track-125-3d-printed-assembled Unfortunately, they haven't made any of these available in many years now, and mine is no longer usable after trying to replace a broken mainboard. A maker in the New York area was doing track balls in his custom split keyboards, but he crashed and burned badly: https://old.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/1hjpq6z/what_happened_to_the_post_about_wylderbuilds/ The designs seem to have been sold to a Chinese manufacturer, who sells them on Ali Express now (search for "dactyl keyboard"). I have a Wylderbuild 4x6 with a trackball as my daily driver (and a custom mix of switches to closely align to the 1-10 scale above incorporating softer press reqs away from home row), and it's decent, but nowhere near as good as the KeyMouse Track was.

I hope someone buys out the KeyMouse IP and spins up a successful business around it. Heber Allred (the founder of KeyMouse) is just too successful in his other start-ups to spend time on KeyMouse, so someone please chase him down and make him an offer he can't resist. Oh, and if you do this, please drop the custom software and just support QMK.

I'm a fan of split ergo boards (own a Glove80 and used a Keyboardio Model 01 before that) and always thought the Corne looked neat, but I'm skeptical of "less is more" taken to its extreme. After a certain point, aren't you trading the strain of moving your fingers away from the home row for the strain of a ton of chords from layer switches and combos? Has there been any research on that topic? I've long suspected the supposed ergonomic benefits of the Corne and even smaller boards are a post-hoc rationalization for their minimal aesthetics and not based in real science, but maybe I'm wrong.

But in either case, you should use what makes you happy, of course :)

Damn this just made me look and realized I've been using the corne rev1 for 3 years. This blog post makes me want to blog about my experience. I've been thinking to build another keyboard (because the process is fun), but got sort of hung up on if I want additional or fewer keys. I guess I'll quickly point out the cons of using a keyboard like this since reviews usually focus on the positives.

backup keyboard

If you have only one keyboard with a custom keymap using something like QMK, it can be a problem if your keyboard stops working for some reason. This mostly depends on how far from normal you stray and how long it's been since using a normal keyboard. I've already strayed pretty far by using Colemak-DH instead of QWERTY.. Some people use HRM (home row mods) and use their index fingers to hit Shift instead of pinky (or some variation of this).

There's software like https://github.com/jtroo/kanata that can bring all the power of QMK / ZMK to normal keyboards. I haven't personally tried it or needed it (yet).

not good for gaming

As one might imagine games usually involve left hand on the keyboard and right hand on a mouse, so switching layers to access numbers with your thumb isn't going to be fast or easy because you can't use your other hand to toggle the layer.

I used to use a 48 key planck and had a "gaming" layer that sort of shifted over "asdf" and the keys around it closer to the center of the board. Think I played through Doom Eternal using this setup fine.

This still isn't great though if you don't use it often it's easy to forget where the keys are. Take this down to a split <= 42 key keyboard and forget it. Much easier to swap in a normalish keyboard.

Easy to forget where rarely used keys are

Once you settle on your layers, then use the keyboard for years, rarely used keys or key combinations take a moment to remember. It's a downside that you can't just glance down at your keyboard to see where something is.

I can't tell you how many times I've missed pressing the key to enter the BIOS or switching boot device on my desktop because it's not something I do often and it takes me a moment to locate F10 / F11 keys. Then trying to locate Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot and try again. It's not something I use very often and haven't taken time to make it easy. Don't get me wrong. There are several ways to address this with a firmware like QMK.

bit rot

Chances are despite using a keyboard for years, you'll still want tweak keys / settings. This just happened to me like a week ago. Happily using my keyboard for ~3 years and not paying much attention to what's going on in keyboard firmware world, went to flash my firmware and the build was broken for latest QMK.

In the process of fixing the build, BOOM paradox of choice hits when I realize there are a lot of alternatives that can update keys on the fly without reflashing. So I end up looking into:

• QMK recommended build process
• QMK new External Userspace feature
• QMK configurator
• QMK supports some json format of keymap now?
• Vial (fork of QMK that has a GUI to make changes on the fly without flashing)
• VIA another easy to use interface that makes real-time changes (some parts closed source?)
• ZMK firmware that supports wireless (thinking about new board and how all this relates ZMK)
• Does my old rev1 corne support these new real-time change methods?

Anyway for newer boards it seems at least possible to avoid having to build / flash if you're using something like Vial. Always seems like there's a feature here or there that's only supported by doing it the harder way (keymap in C + build / flash).

My point is even things like this bit rot because there's no knowing if it will be maintained in the future and there's not some new latest / greatest thing to switch to.

Down the rabbit hole

I've been flirting with the idea of going even smaller than 42 keys, but before buying the hardware I really would need to remap my keys to see if I can even do it. One big thing to address is where to put modifiers:

https://getreuer.info/posts/keyboards/faqs/index.html#home-row-mods-are-hard-to-use

And here I ran out of time. I tried home row mods and... it's hard to get used to and.. complex. I might try the Callum (mentioned in link above) approach which is simpler because no timers are involved, but haven't had time.

I've also flirted with the idea of learning steno:

https://youtu.be/JsRTTD9k2ME?si=dhlzGp-vzfFwFHjR

First time I sort of rejected this it was because I didn't want to have to depend on the plover python script running to make it work. Now I think there is firmware level support (wonder if it can update on the fly). I haven't reconsidered this in years.

There's a rabbit hole and it can be a pro or a con.

Nice one. I was in same place few months back. Also debating between Corne and Lily58.

Build Lily58 Pro MX as it was referred to as safer choice when switching.

My productivity went down.

It was a chore to use the keyboard.

In the first few weeks it felt like it took all the fun from coding.

Reason? In my case being bad typist and having no touch typing skills made adopting split keyboard a big problem.

Few months later, i have 90 WPM touch typing speed on traditional and split keyboard.

Currently use 3w6 split keyboard with trusty Lily58 occasionally making appearance on my desk.

If you trust my experience, learn to touch type first.

Moving to a split-ortho layout has 100% saved my wrists, and I'll never go back at this point.

My personal desktop has an original Ergodox Infinity - I still really like it, but it's probably a little too big (the edges of the thumb clusters don't get a ton of use).

For my work setup, I used an ErgoBlue Wireless until recently (same Ergodox layout, but wireless) but recently switched to a Redox-W - still wireless, but slightly reduced footprint and better thumb clusters.

I think the Redox is probably my preferred layout at this point, though I'm casually brainstorming on whether it'd be possible to integrate a trackpoint (the firmware can handle it but apparently the poll-rate for pointing devices will kill battery life). I'd also like to design a new case that would let me mount each half on the ends of my chair armrests, so that the keyboard would move with me as I pivot to look at different monitors.

I'm somewhat intrigued by these, but im unsure how they work with gaming, it being my main hobby. Would appreciate any information on that.