Keyboards & Mice

The whole input stack, as it sits on the desk: two Vortex 40% keyboards, a QMK-modded ZSA Moonlander, an Apple trackpad, and a single-button Ploopy trackball. There is no mouse — and the layout, not any one device, is the interesting part.

The keyboards

• Two Vortex 40%s. I have two of them; the desk uses one. Small, dense, and exactly the size the layout below needs.
• A QMK-modded ZSA Moonlander. The big one — split into two halves, running QMK the way I want it to. The layout is built around it.

The layout

The desk is a sandwich: the Vortex sits between the two halves of the Moonlander, the 40% in the middle and the split flanking it.

Two more pieces fall out of that arrangement:

• An A5 cutting mat under the Vortex. The desk doubles as the printer's post-processing station — supports get trimmed and prints get cleaned up on the mat, right under the keyboard. The A8 lives on the workbench; this is its cleanup counter.
• The Ploopy under the Moonlander's bottom-right, by the thumb cluster. One button, a trackball, and it lives where the right hand already is — within reach without leaving the keyboard, which is the whole point.

The pointer

Daily pointer work goes through the Apple trackpad — clicking, scrolling, dragging, the usual. The Ploopy Nano 2 is the closer pointer: a minimalist, single-button, 3D-printable trackball, nearer than the trackpad, so programming doesn't mean reaching for it. The work behind it — the QMK fork and the nano-2 trackball — is on the projects page.

No mouse anywhere in the picture. Trackpad for daily pointer work, trackball for staying at the keyboard.