tzarc

My brain can't make low-keycount boards work, personally.

Ended up designing a 64-key one with displays: https://github.com/tzarc/keyboards/tree/main/Djinn -- can't see myself going any fewer than that.

https://wiki.ai03.com/ is what a lot of people use. Though it's probably easier nowadays to use an RP2040-based ProMicro form factor daughterboard so you only need to handle key placement.

Firmware... QMK: https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/ || https://docs.qmk.fm/porting_your_keyboard_to_qmk

Disclaimer: I'm a QMK Maintainer.

As one of the QMK Firmware maintainers, it's great to see you're going ahead with the customisable side of things even on the input side.

Might I suggest engaging with QMK early so that we can avoid the usual manufacturer "hey can you merge this, we've shipped already and forgot to raise the PR until now"?

Just a heads-up, missing a few; https://golem.hu/boards/ seems to be a bit more complete.

None that I'm aware of. And I don't plan on running one of my own -- too many other things going on.

That said, I ended up creating a Discord months ago after a whole bunch of people were going to run their own GB, needed a place to "host" it... never eventuated due to the COVID logistics problem.

Not really; it's a case of soldering on the parts as per the iBOM: https://github.com/tzarc/djinn/blob/main/Rev2a/bom/ibom.html

Only a couple of parts are actually dependent on the side you're soldering (and are listed on the parts BOM), virtually everything else is aligned in such a way that it can be soldered onto either side.

I assembled mine by hand.

I'm not sure a lot of PCB assembly houses would like reversible PCBs.

At the moment I'd advise against it somewhat -- the silicon shortages have basically made the MCU and a couple of other parts unobtainable.

That said, I got mine from everyone's favourite PCB manufacturer: JLCPCB.

All the parts can be found on the BOM: https://github.com/tzarc/djinn/blob/main/Rev2a/Djinn-BOM.md

Full disclosure: I started my foray into split keyboards with an Iris.

...but it didn't have all the keys I wanted, thus the Djinn.

In a week or so, QMK will pick up a whole bunch of new support for pointing devices -- Djinn's open-source, so if you're keen you can swap a display out for a Cirque touchpad for instance.

Right now, none really -- it's a hardware enablement testbed, and really only shows a handful of information, such as Caps/Num/Scroll and what layer you're using.

With QMK we get a lot of requests for "how do I display this", "how do I show that", so it's more a case of making sure it supports most of those scenarios.

Sadly with the silicon shortages, not a lot of people are getting the chance to build them... I'm sure we'd see some interesting usages if/when this display stuff becomes a bit more mainstream.

Oh hey, that's me!

QMK requires a RESET keycode to be added to your keymap in order to reboot into firmware update mode while it's running. Alternatively, depending on the configured options at compile-time, you can either hold ESC as you plug it in, or hold Space+B.

system76's launch requires the holding of ESC on bootup (well, top-left matrix position).

Under normal circumstances there's no "unattended update" functionality built in. Unsure if system76 has modified this behaviour to do so.

(Full disclosure, am a QMK maintainer)