LabNotes for This Project
17 Oct 2023
Having finally decided to get off my backside over the last few weeks and make the templating changes that would let me make a proper project page for the Model II, I have decided that this is as good a time as any to go ahead and do a follow up blog post to the series from last summer on the Model II. It’s been over a year since I put that keyboard into use and I used it for most of that year, so let’s talk about what worked, didn’t, and what comes next for that project if I want to really get my money’s worth out of it.
19 Jul 2022
The first two articles in this series talked about designing and building a mechanical keyboard - the Arcana Labs Model 2. This is a speciality keyboard that I custom designed to fit a very specific set of space and functionality constraints, and while a fair amount of work went into meeting those constraints broadly, there was a lot that did go wrong from a design perspective before laser ever met stock and solder ever met iron.
14 Jul 2022
Earlier on, I discussed the process I went through trying to design the Arcana Labs Model 2, a specialty mechanical keyboard that had to fit a space constraint while also including some kind of pointing device. That post dealt largely with the process of design at a high level; how I came up with the necessary constraints, and what tools I used to facilitate things. This post is going to deal with assembly, as well as the process of getting the firmware working.
11 Jul 2022
If you’re a member of the #secret_projects_chan
on the Arcana Labs Discord or have been following me on twitter for any real length of time, you probably know that I have been designing and building a mechanical keyboard; a project I’ve been working on for the better part of half a year. As is tradition for secret projects, now that it’s more or less complete, I’m documenting it retroactively in a small series of posts on the site. This post is about the process I went through in order to design the keyboard, both conceptually and in real, preparing-for-manufacture terms.