Note: This isn’t going to be an explicit guide on how to add a dongle to any ZMK board. I will create a post for that later. Background I’ve since daily driven the Swan40 for quite a while, and it’s been working perfectly… on my desktop. Since it’s been working out so well, I wanted to make another one to have on-the-go, for use with my laptop. However, this is where some problems appeared. ...

In this module, we will be taking our first steps towards optimizing the 3D printing process. Why Optimize? Yes, the default settings in the slicers mentioned in the last module should work for most cases, but the issue is that they are designed to be a catch-all solution. In simpler terms, they are designed to be able to avoid

Introduction For the “A Guide to 3D Printing” bundle, the idea is to create a practical guide for people who currently view 3D printing as a black box that creates their desired 3D models in real life. You may check out the current posts here. Initial Difficulties For basically all my life, I’ve always been the learner, never the teacher. While trying to compile my knowledge into articles, the biggest difficulty I had was with structuring. Since pieces of knowledge tend to be connected with other pieces of knowledge in a web-like way, it is very tricky to structure everything such that the knowledge can be understood linearly. ...

NOTE: This bundle will be focusing on FDM/FFF (Fused Deposition Modelling/Fused Filament Fabrication) 3D printing. In layman terms, the type of 3D printing where plastic filament is involved. Prerequisites To follow this section, I suggest having the following: A functional 3D printer PLA filament A computer Objective After reading this article, you should be able to: Find 3D models from online sources Use a slicer to turn a 3D model into gcode Successfully print a model Understand the general 3D printing process TL;DR: You should have the bare minimum of understanding needed to print a 3D model. ...

Tricks In my goals for this project, my number one goal was really the battery life. However, on a tiny split keyboard, I have not seen any good battery mounting methods that do not involve tenting the keyboard to make space below it or having it on the side. I want the battery to be part of the keyboard such that the keyboard’s physical footprint doesn’t have to extend too much to accommodate for it. ...

Note: You can find the relevant files of this project in the Swan40 GitHub repository. Goals Hardware On-off switch (Like the Corne) There should be a switch to disconnect the battery on the hardware level. Usage of a XIAO nRF52840 It should utilize Seeed Studio’s XIAO nRF52840 as the controller. (This was a cost-cutting measure; the nice!nano, a commonly used bluetooth microcontroller, costs about 26€ a piece excl. shipping, while this board costs only $10.) Software ZMK It should use ZMK as its firmware. Design Large and flexible battery capacity The PCB should allow for mounting of large and small batteries. There should be at least two battery mounting options. The battery mounting spots should be able to accommodate up to 1000mAh LiPo batteries. 3D-printed case It should be possible to mount the board in a 3D-printed case which does not tilt or raise the PCB significantly. Melted PCB traces The traces should be melted using the Round Tracks plugin. (Because it’s cool!) Aggressive column stagger (Like the Ferris Sweep) The column for the pinky finger should be aggressively staggered.

Disclaimer This is not intended for the average reader. Lots of keyboard jargon is used for the sake of convenience. A Little Background Just skip to the next post if you don’t want to hear my life’s story :D I’m really into keyboards. In particular, mechanical keyboards. I started just about how most people enter this space: “Clicky keyboards are cool”. Well, that is, until they were annoying. Since then, I’ve been on and endless pursuit of the “perfect” keyboard. Here’s a brief timeline, with my Typeracer speeds attached: ...

The Three Types of Task Control After pondering about the topic for a long time, I took some inspiration from a business-related course I previously attended. Push and pull systems in particular stood out to me because I felt like push and pull systems could be abstraction terms used to describe certain task management systems. (REWRITE IN PROGRESS) In modern society, we’re largely deadline-driven, as it is the easiest method for something to get done. If the consequences of not meeting the deadline are severe enough, there is a much lesser need for self-discipline or motivation. ...

Finding Suitable Metrics To reiterate, the goal of this benchmarking is to maximize the amount of things done. I think there are two main factors that affect this metric: How much time is actually spent doing tasks How effectively time is spent doing tasks Both factors are not very straightforward to improve, as they tend to get better with practice. However, some measures for anti-procrastination and anti-distraction may help to speed up the progress for the first factor. ...

Origin TL;DR: Project TTMS is only part of the solution to self-organization. While I was pondering about Project TTMS, I realized that the whole point of an organizational system is to make the process of planning and organizing tasks as seamless as possible, such that I can maximize the amount of effective time (time spent actually doing the tasks). No matter how seamless my self-organizational system is, it doesn’t matter if I cannot actually execute my tasks efficiently. ...