Svalboard combines the amazing magnetic key action of Datahand with a unique anatomical fitment system and integrated pointing devices to give the most customizable, lowest-effort keyboard and mouse solution ever built.
There's a super friendly Discord community, too: www.svalboard.com/discord
Datahands are amazing. With mere twitches of the finger you can hit any key on the keyboard.
I saved up for months while in college and bought a used one. 25 yrs ago they were $1,200... minimum wage was like $4/hr... so... it was "intended for insurance companies to pay" level of money.
If you have either RSI or just love experiencing new ways to do things, Datahand is amazing, and Svalboard looks every bit as good...
and... it's cheaper than it was 25 years ago... with two trackballs added on!
Really excited to see this project!
You really just never take your hands off the keyboard, everything is in nice close range, etc. :)
Aside...
Datahand moved RSI pain from my wrist to my knuckles. These keyboards don't magically prevent all RSI, which is ... only obvious if you actually think on it, which i didn't back then.
I know I personally found mouse keys unusable for day to day use, and another local DH users thought much the same, we had other pointers we used. (I used a fingerworks trackpad back when, clamped onto the side of the laplander, the other guy used a mouse, if I remember right.)
The amount of time wasted moving my hand from one keyboard-half or the other to the mouse and back was very substantial, and it meant compromising on a comfortable position of both.
Svalboard is way more comfortable!
Svalboard is way more adjustable (and therefore comfortable!) than Datahand - especially if you have small hands. It's also a massive, massive advantage to be able to change the keymap so easily - since it's running QMK underneath, you can use an online JavaScript-based tool to change any key to anything else! (and there are 15 shiftable layers, so you can also set up layers for individual apps or games etc). Macro support is great but the true killer app is integrating pointing devices into each side. Datahand had a very clunky up/down/left/right mouse emulation system, but it was incredibly awkward to use and therefore most users had a mouse as well. With integrated pointing (trackballs, Trackpoint or touchpad - mix and match) you never need to lift your hands out of the keyboard, so you can concentrate on finding a comfortable position without having to compromise so your mouse fits. The trackballs G Worm great, and using one for scrolling feels very smooth. Plus, there's an active user community constantly hacking in new features :)
The price gets mentioned a lot, and yes it is expensive. It's still cheaper than taking time off work, and for the amount of thought and design time it embodies, is probably undervalued. It's easy to fall into the trap of only considering the material costs of production now that the design is fairly stable, but bearing in mind this is one person's full-time job. There's also a very generous return policy, and a "let's try to make this work" option for students etc - so it's actually not as bad as it might seem at first glance.
Disclaimer: I'm a happy paying customer with very serious hand RSI and a long history of somewhat-successful surgical repairs. Svalboard allows me to continue working for hours at a stretch, where a flat keyboard would have me unproductive and in pain within half an hour. It might not suit everyone, but it makes a huge difference for those of us that need it!
Now, I help out with their firmware updates, as a volunteer, just keeping things somewhat sane and debugged. Adding features as needed, to support new pointers, etc etc.
Disclaimer: My views are my own, I get provided hardware to do firmware work, and that's it. I do not work for Svalboard, etc.
__BUT__ say I wanted to ditch a KVM switch for some reason, and set up a second workstation at home...
My one complaint for the glove80 is it feels like it was made for someone's hands that are __a little__ larger than mine (I do have some sausage stubbs), so the adjustable clusters are interesting to me! However, I do also have an Azeron Cyborg II at home, which uses a similar idea, the clusters on that __do__ adjust, but at the smallest adjustment its still kind of uncomfortable for me; any small-small-hand users have experience reports with this one?
In practice this behaviour is really useful: I put different keymaps for Windows vs OSX on each hand, and the keyboard uses one or the other depending on which hand is plugged in as master. Swapping is trivial, as the USB cables are interchangeable and magnetic :-)
Glad to see this kind of a system back in play, but this is employer-paid or insurance-paid level of cost. Even the heaviest of my iron - all 256Gb, dual-socket, 40c/80t of it - doesn’t cost this much.
I'm currently sitting at around 90 WPM on the Svalboard - slower than I was on a normal keyboard but now pain-free.
Giving people back pain free use of their hands, and pain free computer is much more important IMHO.
If you really wanted to do this for some reason (chording?) you could use too-small finger keys and press harder. But this would defeat the main point which is to be aggressively ergonomic.
Basically someone got a few promotions and realized he didn't want to get promoted any more as it moved him farther and farther from the work he liked (think, someone that likes programming that keeps getting promotions into management). So, one day he bought a big feather quill pen and started using that instead of a regular pen and never got promoted again...
- Lose your career as a computer user.
- Surgery.
- Try funky expensive keyboard with lots of research behind it, and tons of testimonials.
The funky expensive keyboard suddenly looks like the cheap option.
If you don't value your time, or enjoy 3d printing and assembling stuff, kits get shipped every few months, with all the electronics, and access to the files needed to 3d print the board.
I'm typing this on a board I printed. If I valued my time at my hourly rate, the price listed is dirt cheap. But I enjoyed doing it :)
Also, sadly, the salaries in my country aren't that high that it makes it look cheap compared to do it yourself.
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0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41711437There is a reason kits are offered, and in part it is due to cost.
That said, if there is a true need, talk to the owner. I've watched this business for a while. I have enough parts to have Svalboards forever. But I decide to stay and help, because his heart is in the right place with regards to this whole thing.
That said, he has to put food on the table, and I respect that.
I'd say it's well worth the price for people that need it!
Cut half your right thumb off on a table saw? Ah, OK, enjoy your conventional keyboard :)
But as with all things adaptive and ergo, it depends on the nature of the injury, etc, etc, etc.