Chair-mounted Svalboard

Maybe a few weeks of use after hours before I felt proficient enough to use it at work. Adapting to it is simpler than adapting to a different key layout (ex. QWERTY to Dvorak). I really recommend the Svalbr training web app! It helps you focus on the keys that you are struggling with.

https://r-tae.github.io/keybr.com/

A Svalboard-specific fork of the amazing Keybr.com to help you learn any layout, from the default to the most Svalboard-optimized Hands Down variants.

Svalbr lets you load your own alpha layout on a Svalboard Lightly visualization to guide you through the learning process for any layout. It highlights the letter to strike, and shows you a heat map of your hit/miss rates on a per-key basis so you can fine-tune your fit and choose test material to drill on weak points.

Very happy! The main downsides:

1. Definitely a steep price, regardless of whether you DIY or can justify a prebuilt.
2. Key combos that involve multiple keys on the same thumb (Control+Enter, Control+Shift+anything, etc.) can be difficult, or perhaps even impossible if your thumbs are short enough. Of course, anything that you find too difficult can always be remapped elsewhere.
3. A chair-mounted setup like this would benefit if there was a wireless option available.
4. Maybe a bit of a tangent from the keyboard itself, but the official community discussion platform is Discord

But once I got used to it, this is just the best typing/pointing experience. Your fingers have such a short distance to travel while typing, it is almost like you are using a 10-key keyboard (where your fingers never leave the home row) except you don’t have to memorize a hundred different layers. Then there are the trackballs that are just millimeters from the home row, making this the best pointing/scrolling experience I have tried. Granted, I have never used something like a Charybdis/Keyball, which have a similar layout of trackballs under the keys.

This is also pretty much the most adaptive keyboard available. The key clusters can be easily adjusted on-the-fly into a new position to fit your hands as needed. I feel almost as if I could lose half a finger and be able to simply adjust the position of the appropriate key cluster to accommodate it. At worst, I am sure I could reach out on the Discord to ask for advice or help coming up with a design that could be custom 3D-printed to accommodate my finger stumps.

1. I am not using the breakaway cables that come with the Svalboard, as those are too short. I am instead using a generic 3m USB C cable that wraps around through the back of the chair to connect the two halves (though 2m would likely be sufficient).
2. It should also be noted that the cables that come with the Svalboard only have the detachable magnetic head on one end; the other end of each cable is just a standard USB C connector.
3. I have considered getting 180 degree USB C adapters (random example pictured below) to mitigate snagging
4. I have not noticed anything awkward about the transition from arm to wrist. The way my arms rest, my wrists make a natural arch that bridges that gap between the arm rest and wrist rest. Hopefully that makes sense.