Building Your Own Mechanical Keyboard, Crazy Idea or Stroke of Genius?
summary
A DIY guide to building a split mechanical keyboard from a kit, costing about €210–250 plus keycaps and requiring roughly 4–5 hours of soldering. It explains using a PCB matrix with diodes and a microcontroller, flashing QMK firmware to create programmable layers and mod‑tap behavior, choosing switch types and keycap profiles, and handling AZERTY vs QWERTY and dead‑key accents to reach a working ergonomic split ortholinear layout.
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chapters (17)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:10Keyboard history
- 5:59Mechanical vs membrane
- 7:47Keyboard sizes and layouts
- 9:13Ergonomics and health
- 11:01Split and ortholinear
- 13:06HRO and key layouts
- 15:35Layers and programming
- 18:47Mechanical keyboard parts
- 23:46Switch types
- 27:19Keycaps and profiles
- 28:23First build and budget
- 29:49Soldering and assembly
- 31:15QMK programming
- 37:00Experience and models
- 39:47Typing and learning
- 41:09Resources and final tips
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