It’s usually more an issue of technique than it is the tools. Does your iron have adjustable heat settings (they usually do)? Make sure you have that high enough. Additionally you need to hold the iron to the pads long enough for them to heat up and have the solder bond to them. If the pads aren’t hot enough even if the solder melts it won’t flow over the pad and make a good connection. Using flux is a must. Flux helps remove the layer of oxide and any foreign contaminants from the contacts allowing the solder to flow and bond easily as well.

The easiest way to tell if the pad is hot enough is the solder will flow across it instead of staying balled up.

Been using a ZSA Voyager as a travel keyboard for work and very satisfied with it. Used a Sofle V2 prior to that but I was concerned about how well it was (or rather wasn’t) holding up to the rigors of travel so I replaced it with something designed for travel and a little more robustly constructed.

I use a Workman layout and a few years ago switched to using homerow mods so I found the modifier keys on the Sofle to be redundant so I decided to downscale to something a little more compact. Because my usage is for work the number keys get used heavily so I wasn’t willing to give those up by going to something like a Corne. On the flip side I wouldn’t use the Voyager for gaming due to those same missing modifier keys since keys like shift and ctrl are used in a non-modifier pattern when gaming.

This is the only place I’m aware of, but I’ve hardly done a thorough search. There are some fediverse/lemmy community search tools out there you could probably hit up. One thing that’s most likely true is that there’s no official QMK community on Lemmy.

So, the answer is it’s complicated. I have two very distinct use cases, one is gaming, and the other is work.

For gaming I pretty much need something like a traditional keyboard. I could do a split ergo, but easy access to number keys as well as shift and control without having to remove fingers from the WASD cluster is a must, so anything that moves numbers into a different layer, or that puts shift and control in a weird place is a no go. Because of this I’m currently using a 65% non-split keyboard, although I’m considering other options as well.

For work on the other hand the situation is very different. I started with a fairly tame choice by going with a Lily58. I didn’t really like the placement of the keys on the Lily58 due to my hand size so I replaced it with a Sofle which is nearly the same but slightly different positioning. While using the Sofle I discovered homerow mods which I really like which led me to stop using the modifier keys on the Sofle. Recently I’ve had to do a lot more traveling for work and that’s been rough on the Sofle, so I picked up a Voyager to replace it as a more durable easier to transport board. So far I’m very happy with it.

I’m not sure I could have jumped straight into my current keyboard as my very first split-ortho board. I think rebuilding the muscle memory was a necessary part of the process. That said I wish I could have skipped the Lily58 and gone straight to the Sofle, but that decision is entirely down to how well it fits my particular hand shape, nothing technically wrong with the Lily58.

1. It depends. If you get one that uses a bluetooth capable MCU (like a nice!nano) then yes generally, although last I looked none of them supported QMK so you’ll most likely be forced to use something like ZMK. That could have changed by now though, I know it was being worked out.

2. Yes, but be aware that you should never plug/unplug the TRRS cable used to connect the two halves while they’re powered on. Some Bluetooth models don’t use a TRRS cable but instead have both halves connect wirelessly. Also I know sometimes the firmware can be setup to always expect the half that’s plugged in to be the right or left half and plugging in the opposite side can sometimes do funky things to the keymap.

3. classic or cherry I think. Definitely not chocolate, that’s exclusively for chocolate switches, not cherry. Also switches aren’t hotswap, the sockets are, so there’s no such thing as a Gateron hot-swap switch, that’s just a Gateron switch.

4. usually no. If you get a chocolate switch board you need to be careful about the caps, but finding chocolate caps is already a royal PITA. Some exceptionally large or unusual cherry caps could cause problems but that would be true of any keyboard not just a corne. One thing to be aware of is you’re going to want a ortholinear cap set, not the standard one as you’ll want square modifier keys and things like enter/space that are normally rectangular.

Honestly a little moisture isn’t going to short it unless you’re setting it in a literal puddle. I really wouldn’t worry about it being exposed, it’s not really a problem. Something like electrical tape would protect you if you put something metal against it, but an amount of water that would cause problems isn’t going to be stopped by some tape.

Hmm is it the pin placement or switch spacing? They looked like they had the same pin placement, but I know choc V1 boards tend to use a tighter spacing than V2, but that’s going to vary somewhat, and you might be able to work around that with the right keycaps (maybe certain DSA caps?). At any rate it’s worth pointing out it might be a problem.

Edit: looked it up and apparently the center stabilizer is slightly larger on the V2 which often doesn’t fit in a V1 board, but a V1 switch should be able to fit into a V2 board. There’s also an extra stabilizer pin on V2 switches but that can be snipped off just like the ones on cherry switches. In theory depending on how closely traces are routed you might be able to enlarge the center post hole of a V1 board to fit a V2 switch but that’s a very risky procedure with lots of opportunity to permanently break a board so I’m not sure I would recommend it to anyone who isn’t either a) made of money, or b) an expert at electronics and modding boards.

My limited experience with chocolate switches is that the cap options are severely limited. Mostly you have basic solid colored caps and beyond that not much. The biggest non-basic non-OEM set I’m aware of are the MBK Legend caps.

I think this is in part because chocolate switches being low profile tend to be used on smaller travel sized boards where minimalism is often prized, although that’s just a theory.

Edit: If you’re willing to spend a little money and your board is hotswap, one interesting option would be to swap to the new Kailh Choc V2 switches (assuming you can find them in stock somewhere). They’re chocolate form factor, but with a cherry style stem on them. Doing that and then finding a nice lower profile set of cherry caps could be one way of getting around chocolate caps being pretty drab.

Looking at what you’ve done I think the issue is your LAYOUT macro. You’ve got different sized nested arrays declared. In keymap.c you declare that keymaps is a MATRIX_ROWS by MATRIX_COLS array, but in your macro for LAYOUT you define the first 5 rows as having 7 entries, and the remaining 5 rows as having 6 entries so it can’t work out if you want a 10x7 array or a 10x6 array.

Edit: also taking a look at config.h looks like MATRIX_COLS is defined as 6, so you’ve got 1 extra key defined in each of your first 5 rows.

Yep, indexing is to make it easier to make sure your fingers are in the right spot. Most keycap sets will include indexed versions of F and J for QWERTY layouts, although you can usually also buy additional indexed keys (such as T and N) for other layouts. The traditional indexed keys help with horizontal alignment while the traditional row stagger helps with vertical alignment. However with columnar stagger like most split ergo keyboards use I actually find vertical alignment to be the bigger issue most times since all the rows “feel” the same. Having some bumps on the top row would help with the vertical alignment I think.

Looking at the options though I’m not terribly thrilled with the colors/design/looks of most of the ones I’m finding. I think you found the perfect ones for your caps and it just all looks so clean (the alignment of those stickers on the keys is just chefs kiss perfect, well done). Unfortunately if I picked up a voyager I was thinking about replacing the caps with the MBK Legend keycaps and I’m having trouble finding anything that would look anywhere near as nice as your setup with those.

Ugh… now I’m even more tempted to buy one of those. On a related note, those caps are really nice, but I’ve got to ask about the pink balls on them. Are those balls actually part of the cap, or is that something you added after the fact? I’m sure that’s probably great to help with indexing and I’m kind of tempted to try it myself.

I know there’s a small I2C module you can get with a miniature trackball like the ones that were popular on certain models of blackberry phones around 2010 or so. I found it being sold on pishop, but the silkscreen on it says its made by pimoroni.