[zenkalia]

After the deep discussions on the Lilygo T-Deck and the Clicks keyboard, I felt like this needed to be shared. I nearly built something like the Clicks for myself but the closer I got the worse it seemed, ergonomically. Not only that the Clicks key layout only has shift on one side and it doesn't have a backlight.

Some background: I have been shopping around for a bluetooth keyboard to use for thumb typing for the last few months. I have a book to edit and a newborn that is always sleeping on my chest. I tried a few bluetooth keyboards from Amazon but they were all garbage.

Eventually I found the T-Keyboard and have been really pleased by it. This is the keyboard from the T-Deck with a little 160x40 screen attached to it. The screen allows you to see what you're typing on the device without looking at your phone. It boots in half a second which means switching back and forth is lightning fast. If I'm typing a few words, I stick to my touchscreen. I'm editing so there's a lot of selecting text to copy / paste / annotate which is also touchscreen work. When I need to add a new paragraph or more, I set my phone down and pick this thing up to type with.

It really is fantastic. If you decide to pick one up, you may want to run my fork which fixes a bunch of the usability issues: https://github.com/zenkalia/T-keyboard/tree/bleeding_edge

[pomatic]

The problem I have with the blackberry keyboards is the omission of commonly used linux symbols such as tilde - how do you cope with that? Or perhaps I am missing a trick? I've resorted to salvaging Psion 5 keyboards and rolling my own hardware as the result.

[zenkalia]

I don't need a tilde but I could add one in about 5 minutes if needed. It would be something like this:

https://github.com/zenkalia/T-keyboard/blob/bleeding_edge/ex...

except it would add a ~ rather than trigger an arrow key. I'd likely put it on sym+q so that it is in a similar space to a real keyboard.

I was discussing special characters with someone on github. If the character isn't in the font you'll have to do some extra work that I summarized in this comment: https://github.com/Xinyuan-LilyGO/T-keyboard/issues/10#issue...

In the comment above it the mapping table that I'm talking about is this one: https://github.com/zenkalia/T-keyboard/blob/bleeding_edge/ex... .

[WaxProlix]

> After the deep discussions on the Lilygo T-Deck and the Clicks keyboard

Care to link those? I've been poking around some of this stuff and have a Lilygo T-Display and T-Embed en route, would be nice to see other more knowledgable folks' opinion on the products, dev experience, etc.

(edit, there isnt much in a search for 'lilygo' so I surmise it's this fella https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38862848 )

[zenkalia]

That's the one! And this was the Clicks discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38871987

It's not very relevant to Lilygo tinkering but just a deep discussion of physical keyboards for phone use.

[RockRobotRock]

>layout only has shift on one side

Do people use right shift? Earnest question

[lrasinen]

On a regular keyboard all the time. It's the left shift that gets no love.

(Finnish layout, not sure if that makes a difference)