Mechanical Keyboards

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LF 60% with mode toggle (feddit.it)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi! I'm relatively new to mechanical keyboards and I need some help.

I need a 60% that will allow to toggle between two mode, one for writing and one for cursor movement with arrows (possibly on IJKL).

From what I found most of the 60% use the Fn button for arrows, but you have to keep it pressed, which will not work for me... I need to actually toggle the alternative layout. Some 60% have a "Fn lock" to support this, but it's hard to tell by just looking at their specs...

Do you know any model with a similar feature?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Why not have both?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm currently on a TLK, and mostly because I want to learn to stop moving my hands away from the home row. It's not even only about arrows, but also home/end page up/down etc. and combinations with them which I use a lot and it just get slow and weird since I have to reposition my hands every time... mine is currently quite limited in what I can program it to do unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Sorry, forgot to respond, I use fn+arrows for home/end/pgup/dn. This is why I got a pcb that was capable of accommodating the arrow cluster (dz60, bt60v2. I use a lot of combos with shift and ctrl as well to select/mark stuff and jump back and forth, so barring getting used to hjkl, I found this more comfortable.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I haven't made a keyboard in awhile but anything that supports QMK (or whatever is new and shiny today) should be able to support this.

QMK and the like are custom firmware so you can pretty much code up whatever feature you need.

If you are looking for a pre-built, I know my Tofu65 supports QMK from https://kbdfans.com/.

QMK is written in C but they do have a no code tool I used for my Tofu65: https://config.qmk.fm/#/.

If the tool doesn't cover your use case and you are able to do a little C, these sections are good starting points for layers (what you call modes) and cursor keys.

https://docs.qmk.fm/feature_layers

https://docs.qmk.fm/features/mouse_keys

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

QMK looks good, also because I'm familiar with C. I'll probably go with a prebuild to start out since I'm mainly interested in customizing the setup for now, thanks!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Any keyboard that supports qmk should work for this. You can enable mousekeys and there are also functions to toggle layers

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

very nice pointer, have you flashed this on any keyboard?