Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

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I switched to a Moonlander from an Ergodox and am liking it. I ended up not liking their built-in tenting mechanism, so 3D printed my own shims that screw to the back, allowing me to tent the keyboard but also tilt the "wings" upwards. Very comfortable!

One thing I thought I hated about the Ergodox was how inaccessible the small keys on the thumb cluster were, and I thought I would like 3 big keys better. It turns out not to be the case... those keys are useless, but there are a lot of useless keys that are nice to have around (arrows, delete/insert, home/end, pgup/pgdn). I mostly do everything in Emacs and so don't use those keys, but when I'm using non-Emacs software, I do miss them.

(I ultimately decided on Backspace, Alt, Up; Space, Enter, Down as what I use the big thumb keys for. Not sure I love this. This transitioned my backspace key from my right pointer finger to my left thumb, and it broke my muscle memory. I still forget that you can control backspace words to kill them outside of Emacs (where I use C-w for that, which closes your window in every other program).)

TL;DR: it's fine! But still not perfect.

I forgot that I use Twitter sometimes and have pictures of another Moonlander experiment: mounting it to my chair! https://twitter.com/petersergeant/status/1356057651931537408

I did eventually get parts for both sides. One of the flexible arm clamp tripod mount thingies was not stiff enough to hold the keyboard up, but the other one was great. Since they were both the same part from the same order... it's kind of a crapshoot as to whether or not it will work. But I will continue to experiment.

That’s fantastic. Is your 3D model on Thingiverse or anywhere else? I’ve been thinking about making exactly the same thing to use tripod mounts on the Moonlander.

Here you go: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4769654/files

Honestly, I measured the hole spacing as 19.5mm but it is definitely not quite right because it is tough to get all 4 screws in. I don't have gauge pins to measure it correctly, and the accuracy suffers. But you can get two screws in which was enough for my use.

I uploaded the Fusion 360 file so you can easily correct this.

I would also print it upside down from how it displays on Thingiverse. That way the mount <-> keyboard interface is as smooth as possible. (Well, if you have a smooth print plate, I guess.)

I tried mounting my Ergodox EZ to my chair like you (almost exactly too: 3D printed mount + gorillapod). I found the TRRS cable between the halves to be very very annoying to get in and out of the chair. How did you solve that problem? I once tripped and broke the mount (PLA is brittle) when I went to answer my intercom.

I bought a long TRRS cable and ran it behind the chair.

d'oh?!

I’ve been looking at the Moonlander and the tenting is what’s holding me up. Do you have a file for those shims you made that I could use?

And how did you bolt those things on? Are there screw holes on the back?

Yeah, there are 4 M2.5 threaded holes on the back, precisely for mounting your own stands. (The subreddit seems to think that some first-party things that screw in there are on the way. In the meantime, I'm happy with my own.)

Here is a Thingiverse link: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4769961

There are caveats mentioned on the Thing page. I measured the screw spacing imprecisely and you will have to pick your favorite diagonal to put 2 of the 4 screws in ;) You'll also have to mirror the file to print one for the other hand.

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