r/crkbd

So I am a programmer by career and hobby, and I also use linux, vim and a tiling window manager. So my day to day workflow is very keyboard centric. Hence i would be working for hours on end and feel very sharp pains in my wrist and similar stuff, my fingers would be absolutely destroyed by the end of the day.

So I was afraid of getting carpal tunnel or something and looked into alternative keyboards and layouts. Since I am really into optimizing my workflow, i got really excited by it and bought a corne v3... and thought of going all the way and also switching to colemak dh at the same time.

So I made this keyboard layout myself, because using somebody else's didn't feel right as i wanted something tailor made for my needs. And also I use a tiling window manager so I made a dedicated layer that holds super, so stuff like super + 1 is really easy.

now here's the issue, i have been using this keyboard on and off for a couple months and finally fully committed myself to it since the last month... and this ain't it chief...

I have been practicing semi-daily for a month using it as my daily driver and its still uncomfortable to me and i struggle using it like my regular qwerty keyboard...

I am getting around 60wpm on colemak, struggling to improve but can touch type properly. I am ok with normal typing thats not the issue

My main issue is everything else, I fucking hate using the modifiers, they are so bad, and also struggle a lot with symbols and stuff so programming is an absolute slog, which is very frustrating to me, having to relearn all the vim motions too and i am missing that HJKL keys position a lot.

I used to be able to use by computer at the speed of thought, but with pain. Now i dont have the pain but using my computer is such a chore and i get so frustrated at myself.

Is this it for me? I gave it a honest try and I am thinking of switching back, but i kinda regret it, i spent about a hundred dollars and months of my time on this, and as a college student from a third world country thats a lot to me.

I really don't want to give up tho, because i really the few fleeting moments when I am able to properly use this keyboard in a non frustrating manner... and i really want the outcome.. I really like the one shot shifts and stuff like that, how everything is nearby and my hands need to move so little...

So I want to ask you guys help as a last ditch effort, can yall please look at my keymap and suggest how i could improve the symbols and modifiers please.

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So, I got another corne keyboard 3 months ago, and this time it's wireless Eyelash Corne, bought in Taobao for around $90. I already had a wired corne but I don't like the wires.

I've been using the keyboard for 3 months and it feels great to type on. I particularly love its portability; I can bring the keyboard anywhere, and start typing on whatever device (primarily my phone and my tablet). I have configured the keyboard to have 9 BT profiles so I am never scared of having not enough profiles to switch between. And switching between profiles is almost instant, I can be typing on phone, press a hotkey, and then type on my tablet on the next second.

One very interesting use case I found for the keyboard is typing dream journals. When I wake up after a vivid dream, I would put my phone on my pillow, and place my split keyboard right below my hands. Then I would type out the dream while I was still lying in the most relaxed pose, with my eyes closed. (and the silent switches make it so that I won't wake my family while typing)

Since I have already set up a keymap on the og wired corne keyboard, I just have to migrate my QMK code to the new ZMK (the ZMK web keymap config tool helped me a lot). If you saw my last post, I said I wanted shorthand typing. Although at last I couldn't get the shorthand working, I quickly got used to just typing everything out in full form, so it wasn't an issue anymore lol.

The keycaps are 3D printed (PETG). I originaly just wanted some really low-profile, flat MX Stem keycaps but I can't seem to find one in Pinduoduo or Taobao. So I guess I will download some keycaps 3D models and print 'em out (and I customized the mushroom bump thing which I liked a lot)

It comes with two 3D printed case, one thinner, and one thicker. The thicker one can let me store the extra 1000mAh battery below the keyboard, but I have never installed the battery because even then, the keyboard battery life is long enough. I just have to charge the left peripheral every 2 to 3 weeks, and every 4 to 5 weeks for the right peripheral.

I have tried some tenting option with MagSafe ring, but I found out having the keyboard placed flat on the table is probably the most comfortable for me, and since week 2 I have been using the keyboard flat on table, without any tenting.

Shoot of course I forgot to mention the LCD screen and the encoders

For the screen, the most useful thing is probably the bluetooth profile display. Seeing layer names can sometimes be useful for me, especially when I have one layer for typing english, and one for typing chinese. WPM looks great but who would actually look at that lol.

And the encoders are more useless than I thought (at least for how I use it) The 5-way joystick is just... too hard to reach? and it's basically 5 keys so I would just use another layer and type out the keys (I currently use mouse nav with keyboard layers)

For the scroll encoder, I guess it could be useful for scrolling documents, but I rarely use it (again I have keyboard keys for scrolling docs)

And no split keyboard is great without a good typing layout. Again, I have owned a wired corne so I have already learnt SHROME (a custom layout by me which is similar to canary)

For the specs:

Board: ZMK Eyelash Corne (at ~$90)

Switch: Kai-lh Low Profile Switches Deep Sea Silent (MX Stem) (Taobao at around $13 for 42 switches)

Keycaps: 3D custom-printed keycaps from Pinduoduo (PETG) (at around $7)

Finally, I typed this entire reddit post on my samsung s24 with the corne keyboard, and I really, really liked typing on it (maybe I typed too much)