The Dactyl-ManuForm keyboard: Opposable Thumb Edition

This, the DMOTE, is an application for designing a keyboard that suits you. By editing text files of parameters, you can change:

• Switch type: ALPS or MX.
• Size and shape.
  • Row and column curvature and tilt (tenting).
  • Exceptions at any level, down to the position of individual keys.
• Minor features like LED strips and wrist rests.

Here’s an example of what you can do: A split-hand, concave, columnar, ergonomic keyboard with large thumb clusters and wrist rests.

To get started, try the introduction, part of the project’s documentation. For a less technical, more illustrated overview, try this article.

Links

This project, the DMOTE application, is a fork of Tom Short’s Dactyl-ManuForm. It’s one of many forks in the Dactyl genus.

There’s a small family of accessory projects:

• dmote-keycap: A library used directly by the DMOTE application to model both featureless maquettes for use in easily rendered previews, and “minimal” keycaps you can print and use to save space.
• dmote-topography: Smooth organic topography for height maps you can use as wrist rests, including the example bundled in the resource folder of this project.
• dmote-beam: Configurable clips for stabilizing a split keyboard by holding a connecting rod between the two halves.

Like its parent, the DMOTE project is based on Matthew Farrell’s scad-clj. A second small family of general CAD libraries for scad-clj have grown up around the DMOTE project.

• scad-app: A simple way to turn scad-clj specifications into applications, stripping out some boilerplate. See also cad-template, which is all boilerplate for starting new CAD projects that are ready to render.
• scad-tarmi: Commonplace abstractions.
• scad-klupe: Threaded fasteners.

License

Copyright © 2015-2020 Matthew Adereth, Tom Short, Viktor Eikman et al.

The source code for generating the models (everything excluding the things/ and resources/ directories) is distributed under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3. The generated models and PCB designs are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License Version 3.0.