The MT3 Retro set was never produced, and Drop seems to be phasing out MT3, so it’s highly unlikely that it’ll ever be produced. There’s been some discussion about this on Matt3o’s discord.
SA Retro is pretty much the only option, but it is a very nice set.
Same vein, different vibe: Nazi by Chumbawamba
Checkout the Femtofox, it’s a Luckfox pico running full Linux with a 1W LoRa module, and it happens to have the Ethernet port built in. Really neat bit of open source kit.
The Chouchou board looks like it is only compatible with choc switches, so that’s what you’ll need to get. In this case, “choc” is shorthand for “Kailh Choc (or Chocolate) V1” which is arguably the most popular low-profile switch in the mechanical keyboard community. There is a choc V2 switch as well, but few hobbyist boards are designed for it, and it’s not strictly compatible with the choc V2 PCB footprint. Do not buy choc V2 for the Chouchou.
Choc v1 switches require their own type of keycaps and are not compatible with the vast majority of keycaps which are designed for MX switches (which is the de facto “normal” switch you find on most mechanical keyboards that are not low-profile). You are correct that “1.5u” means that the keycap is 1.5 units long; you can use 1.5u keycaps for the thumb keys on Chouchou, but 1u keycaps will work too as you can see in the photo in their GitHub repo.
If building this board will be your first soldering project, then you’ve picked a good one to start with since you won’t have to worry about soldering tiny diodes or anything like that. This board has the option of using “hot swap” sockets for the choc switches if you think you’ll want to try different variations of the switches, but the PCB also allows you to solder the switches directly to the board if you want something more permanent (and fewer parts).
There is plenty more to know about mechanical keyboards, but the community is friendly, so ask your questions when they come up. Hope that helps!
Thanks for sharing! It sounds like you’re getting good results with the filter regardless, but I’d be interested to see the numbers whenever you have a chance to measure again. I’ve been wanting to try something like this myself, but there are so many bad reviews for different BPFs out there, it’s hard to know which vendors to trust.
Did you roll your own BPF, or purchase it? If the latter which one did you get?
I’ve been using my bad wings (v1) for over a year, and I didn’t think I’d ever give it up. It’s a 36-key mono-body split with a cirque track pad in the middle, and I use it with a miryoku layout. I used it as my only board for several months after I first built it, but I was constantly using it for travel and project computers (it’s perfect for tinkering with raspberry pis), so I put another board at my desktop computer and now my bad wings goes wherever I go for my laptop, or hot-desking, or projects, or anything else. I’ve even used the track pad on it as my only mouse for days at a time.
I recently bought a bad wings 2 as a back up and so that I could convert my first one to wireless with ZMK. All in all, it’s been a fantastic board for me, and I’ll definitely be using it for the foreseeable future.
I’m curious what you think about that little joystick; do you find yourself using it much?
I think the terms you’re looking for are “choc spacing” and “MX spacing”. Choc spacing is what the Piantor uses where the space for each key is 18 x 17 millimeters. MX spacing is 19 x 19 millimeters.
If you want to keep using low-profile switches, there are a handful of boards that either choc or MX switches, and any of those will always use MX spacing. That said, I don’t think there are a lot of pre-built options in this space.
Maybe check out Klor. I think that one is offered as a pre-built by beekeeb and it uses MX switches. It’s got the more aggressive pinky stagger, but it also has some splay which may or may not be your thing. I just finished building one using tecsee “medium” switches and MTNU keycaps, do it’s lower profile, but still not as low as choc.
This turned out longer than expected. TL;DR: no regrets using a Lily58, but moving on to fewer keys turned out really well for me.
My first ergo board was a Viterbi from Keeb.io, a 5x14 split ortholinear. At the time, I really thought I needed to have all the symbol, number, and navigation keys on the base layer because I use them all the time for work. This board taught me that having more things for my thumbs to do was a game-changer. That eliminated the need for some of the keys on the outer edges of the board, and I started seeing the appeal of layers.
So I down-sized to a Lily58, and it was great! I used that board for a while, and I spent a lot of time working out a keymap that I liked. Since I was using this full-time, I decided I needed a second one to use for work-travel, so I built a low-profile Lily58 with choc switches. (I tried an Iris during this time too, but the height was too much for me). I really liked both of these Lily58 boards, but I was struggling to develop a keymap that really worked well for me.
When reading about others’ keymaps, I kept seeing Miryoku pop up, so I decided to buy a new board to try it out (I didn’t want to alter the Lily58s that I was depending on for daily use). I picked up a Crow Board for like $30 and put Miryoku on it.
It. Was. Amazing.
The Miryoku keymap just really clicked for me; it had every key I could possibly need in a set of layers that felt logical. It was also my introduction to home row mods which I was always afraid to try on my Lily58s because it seemed error-prone, but it was actually a great feature. There was a bit of adjustment period for this keymap, but I was completely sold on it. Now I had two new problems: the Lily58s had too many keys, and the thumb layout was uncomfortable because the expectation with Miryoku is that each thumb should rest on the center key of a set of three keys.
That launched a build spree of boards that had ~36 keys in trying to find something I really liked: Swweeep (choc-spacing and wireless!), Totem (let’s try some splay), Badwings (monoblock split with a trackpad), Kurp (ortholinears are still cool), Piantor (a little more thumb-keys spacing), Corne LP (odd-ball low profile switches with MX stems), and Waterfowl ('cause I missed MX switches and keycaps).
These days, I’m mostly using the Waterfowl on my desktop computer for remote work and Badwings as my go anywhere, do anything board for everything else. Do I regret buying and building all those other boards? Not one bit. I learned something from every one of them, and I also found that I just really enjoy building keyboards. It’s really satisfying to solder a bunch of parts together, print a case, and make something that’s truly my own that I can use everyday. I still have more builds lined up to try different layout and feature variations too.
Kaihl choc switches (the V1 type) are going to have the shortest travel out of the keyboard switches that are common enough to use, and that’s what most low-profile hobbyist mechanical boards out there use. There’s a “choc amber” version that recently became available that have the shortest travel distance among choc switches (1mm actuation, 3mm overall), but they’re pricey and I haven’t seen anyone fill a keyboard with them yet. Those are also designed for fight pads, so I don’t think they’re made with silence in mind.
There are “silent” choc switches on their way (developed by Darryl lowprokb.ca), but they’re not available quite yet.
There’s also the Kaihl X switch with a 2mm overall travel distance, but they’re also pricey and I think it next to impossible to get key caps for them (at least it was last time I checked). Hazel is the only person I’ve seen make a keyboard for those: https://github.com/hazels-garage/shortstack. Awesome stuff, but probably not easily obtainable.
Thanks for sharing these. I ordered a set of the linear version of these after seeing your post and I’ve been using them for a few days on a Klor with MTNU keycaps. They’re pretty decent switches and I was really surprised at how quiet they are.
Maybe their FAQ is out of date, but this says that ZMK doesn’t support wired split keyboards (yet): https://zmk.dev/docs/faq#does-zmk-support-wired-split
It looks like your reset buttons are escaping. I really want to see the cardboard case. Embrace the jankyness!
XTAR PB2SL V2. It’s basically a 2 cell lipo charger that doubles as a powerbank. I’ve got one and it works well. It has a mode that keeps the output “awake” when powering small devices which is handy for electronics projects too. My only complaint is that the batteries are a little too accessible, so I’m hesitant to fly with it.