An ultraportable mechanical keyboard for comfortable typing anywhere
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
This morning, we crossed the 1000% funding mark. Thank you all so much!
Last week, we announced that we'll be letting backers vote on an additional keyswitch option. Based on the feedback y'all so kindly gave us, here are the five candidates. There's a stiff linear, two varieties of clicky, and two varieties of non-clicky tactile switches. The switch that gets the most votes will be offered as an option for you to choose after the campaign ends, along with BOX Red, Speed Copper, and BOX White.
Backers can get the link to vote by clicking here.
Kailh BOX Brown
BOX Brown switches are traditional mechanical keyboard switches with a tactile key feel, but without extra "clicky" noise. They're relatively office-friendly and feel smooth, with almost no wobble. They are similar to the Speed Copper option, but notably, you have to press further down in order to actuate the switch.
Kailh Blue
Blue switches are what most folks think of as "mechanical keyboard" switches. They have a tactile bump and an audible "click". They are a bit heavier than the BOX White switches we offer (60 g vs 50g).
Kailh BOX Ancient Grey
Kailh's Ancient Grey switches come from their "China" switch series. The Ancient Grey switches are linear keyswitches, with neither a tactile bump nor a clickleaf. These switches are fairly stiff, requiring over 90 grams of force to actuate. (The BOX Red linear option only requires 50g of force).
Kailh BOX Noble Yellow
Noble Yellow switches, also from Kailh's "China" line of switches are clicky and also very tactile. As you press down, it almost feels like the switch falls away under your finger.
Kailh BOX Burnt Orange
These switches are another tactile, non-clicky option. They have a heavier feel than the other tactile switches we've discussed. A nice choice if you tend to hammer your keys.
To recap: We're hoping to offer a few sets of wooden keycaps as high-end, limited edition rewards. Over the past week, Jesse has spent a few days with our CNC mill working to prototype them.
We started out milling the "bottom" sides of the keys, cutting away enough wood to fit the plastic keyswitch inserts that will let us mount the keycaps on a keyboard.
We managed to cut the entire back side of a keyboard's worth of keys without making any horrible mistakes. We got the dimensions for the keycap inserts right.
From there, it was time to flip over the maple board we were using for our set of test keycaps.
We milled out 44 keycap tops. It took the better part of a day (though we'll be able to improve on that going forward.)
And then it was time for the moment of truth - we needed to cut out the edges of each keycap, leaving it holding onto the board by just a few tiny tabs. After that, we'd be able to manually snap each key out of the board.
The mill spun up for the final step.
And that's when disaster struck.
As the mill traced its way around each key, the keys in the centers of each side started flying off.
To solve this problem, we're going to need a bit more space between the keys that we're cutting out. That means that we're not going to be able to cut a full sets of keycaps with a single grain pattern out of a single piece of wood.
We did manage to rescue enough keycaps to convince ourselves that we want to keep going.
Next up, we're going to try cutting out a set of 10 keycaps. If they look good, we'll do that a few more times and, hopefully, be able to show off a Keyboardio Atreus with wooden keycaps.
Stay safe out there,
<3 Jesse + Kaia
Hello!
As we write, we're into the third day of the campaign and, with 861 backers, just hit $130,000 raised.
Most folks who back Kickstarter campaigns contribute in the first 48 hours or the last 48 hours, with 26 long days in between. You folks are the ones who made our first couple days so stellar. Thank you!
We could really your help to find those folks who will back the campaign later. If you have friends who you think might love the Atreus, now is a great time to tell them about the campaign.
We've got one quick announcement about keycaps for today. A number of you have written asking if there's a way to get a Keyboardio Atreus with Dvorak, Colemak, or blank keycaps.
If you're looking for Dvorak or Colemak caps, we've already got you covered: the Keyboardio Atreus features "XDA" profile keycaps. Each and every key has the same outside shape, so it's easy to move them around to exactly match your layout.
Today, we're pleased to report that at the same time you choose your switches, you will be able to choose between labeled and blank keycaps for your Keyboardio Atreus.
The blank keycaps won't have laser-engraved labels, but will otherwise be exactly the same as the not-blank keycaps. Keyboards with blank keycaps will still come with "Any" and "Butterfly" keys as free add-ons.
If you are backing for a tier with August delivery, you'll get to pick your keycaps at the same time you pick your switches, after the campaign has wrapped up.
Because the early-delivery keyboards are already being produced as a single batch, we're not able to offer unlabeled keycaps on those units. All early-delivery keyboards will ship with labeled keycaps. If you backed at this tier and now want to change your pledge, you can do that within Kickstarter by clicking on "manage my pledge".
Stay safe and take care of each other,
<3 Jesse + Kaia
Hi!
This morning, we crossed the $200,000 mark. As of tonight, it looks like we'll be making at least 1350 keyboards, 750 travel cases, and 400 walnut palm rests. We're pretty excited.
The success of the campaign so far means we've got enough keyboards on order to offer an additional switch option. We need your help deciding which switch to offer.
Here's how this will work:
From today until April 6, you can nominate new switch options for the Keyboardio Atreus by filling out this Google Form.
We'll take your suggestions to our factory to see which switches they can get for a price similar to the Kailh switches we're already offering. Once we know which switches we can offer you, we'll put together a list of the 5 or 10 top options (the finalists).
One week from today, on April 6, we'll announce the finalists and open up voting for the new switch option.
Everyone who backs the project before April 6 will get a vote.
On April 10, we'll announce the winning switch, which will be an option for any regular-delivery keyboard.
A few of you have asked us what the white, copper, and red switches we've selected for the Keyboardio Atreus, so we put together a quick little video to show off the different switches.
Keyswitch sound can vary a lot based on your personal typing style, but hopefully this video can give you a bit of an idea of how things the various switches sound in a quiet room, with a relatively heavy typing style. In the video, the Speed Coppers sound almost as loud as the BOX Whites. In regular typing, we find them to be a bit quieter.
While sheltering in place, we've been exploring whether we can make an all-wood keycap set as a limited, high-end reward.
Over the weekend, we made some progress on these experimental wooden keycaps. After a fair bit of experimentation with tiny 1mm CNC router end-mills, we've come to the conclusion that we're not going to be able to cut the cross-shaped stems on the bottoms of the keycaps that slide onto the keys. 100% wooden keycaps aren't feasible for us to make.
So we're focused on Plan B, which is to mill wooden keycaps that fit on top of injection-molded plastic inserts.
Yesterday, we milled from scrap wood the outside shape of a keycap. We also milled the inside shape of a keycap.
The next step is making sure we can mill both the inside shape and outside shape on the same piece of wood, properly aligned. To do that we'll need to create a jig to flip over the piece and re-align it on the mill. If things go to plan, we'll mill both sides of a sample keycap in the next couple days and then move on to trying to mill a whole set.
No matter whether we succeed or fail, we'll take lots of pictures.
Kickstarter projects often promote each other in backer backer updates. It's a great way of reaching other folks who like to back Kickstarter campaigns. Generally, we only agree to promote another project if it feels like it's something our backers might actually want. It helps a lot if we know the creators or their products.
In this case, Jesse has had a MOFT stand on his laptop for months. It's been a nice way to boost the height of your laptop screen, especially when working from a kitchen table. At CES this past year, Jesse got to meet the MOFT team at CES and to preview their MOFT Z. He even spent a few minutes at their booth at the show typing on an Atreus, which was connected to a laptop on a MOFT Z. It was a very comfortable typing experience. Sadly, he didn't think to take a picture.
MOFT Z: The 4-in-1 invisible sit-stand laptop desk
"MOFT Z is a lightweight and foldable sit-stand desk. It’s designed to combine maximum comfort with maximum freedom for the heavy laptop users. With the origami-inspired structure, MOFT Z transforms from a magazine-sized body to four different positions. Develop healthy posture habits that keep you active and productive all day! Check HERE to know more."
That's it for today. Thanks again for all your support.
Stay safe, flatten the curve, and take care of each other,
<3
j+k
Hi!
First up, you guys continue to be wonderful. When we woke up this morning we’d crossed over 1000 backers and $150K raised — Wow! Thank you! On top of that, we love the notes you keep sending about how excited you are about this project.
We've gotten a few questions about how the ongoing pandemic might affect this Kickstarter. It's a very natural question, so we've spent most of this update talking about it. If you want to skip it, here's the tl;dr: rewards are still on schedule. This update is just a peek at our planning process.
We wrote a little bit about Coronavirus in the "Risks" section of the campaign, but haven't talked extensively about how our business has been affected to date.
Today, we'd like to tell you a little bit about what we know, what we're doing, and how we're thinking about things.
Everything we're writing today is the best information we have as of 10:30PM Pacific on March 23, 2020. Things are changing pretty fast. We care a lot about your health and safety, the health and safety of everyone in our supply chain, and our own health and safety; if we had to, we'd choose to slip deliverable dates over doing something unsafe. Some of the details we write about today will change, but we don't know -which- details will change. We're going to continue to be as smart and careful as we can be. We'll do our best to keep you informed as the situation evolves.
Way back in the middle of February, it looked like we might end up having to delay the launch of the Keyboardio Atreus. The factories we work with are in Guangdong, and COVID-19 was ravaging China without any end in sight. Very few factories in Guangdong Province were open. One of our suppliers wrote to say that they were considering opening up the following week. We told them that we thought they should wait another couple weeks and that we'd much rather they be healthy than open. They did end up delaying opening.
As of now, all of our suppliers are open and operating...well, we don't want to say "normally", but pretty close to normally, as domestic transmission in China has dropped to nearly zero. Factories are doing temperature checks on workers twice a day but are otherwise business as usual. The lead-times we're being quoted for parts and products are typical for what we'd expect around this time of year.
One interesting detail we've been seeing is that a number of factories been converting their production lines to make masks. As far as we know, none of the factories we work with directly are making masks. One of our regular suppliers tells us that a lot of these factories are making the switch with support from the Chinese government.
We've been doing our best to help make connections between the suppliers and partners offering up masks and related expertise & NGOs and hospitals in the US, but it sounds like there's still a lot more demand than there is supply.
While we're all hoping that COVID-19 is a non-issue by the time your keyboards are ready to ship, we're not blindly assuming that will be the case.
We plan to use our Hong Kong-based fulfillment partner for all Atreus campaign-related fulfillment. As of today, Hong Kong is doing pretty well in their battle against the virus.
The keyboards, travel cases, and wooden palm rests will be packed in cardboard boxes at factories in southern China. Those cardboard boxes will get packed into big master cartons and loaded on trucks and shipped to the warehouse in Hong Kong. That typically takes 48-72 hours.
We'll send the warehouse in Hong Kong your addresses and orders. Usually, it takes them 2-3 days to ship out large orders. One by one, they'll pull items out, label them, and hand them off to shipping companies. The exact courier we'll use at the time of shipment is going to depend on market rates for shipping the week we're sending stuff out.
From there, the courier will take care of getting your keyboards and accessories to you.
Everything we've read confirms our understanding that you shouldn't need to worry about coronavirus hiding in any package sent to you from abroad.
As of today, the guidance we've seen from the WHO and CDC is that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 can survive on cardboard for up to 24 hours and on plastics and some metals for up to 72 hours. Because the boxes we're shipping to you will have been sealed more than 72 hours, we do not believe that you should need to be concerned about your keyboard or accessories being contaminated. Similarly, because it's going to take more than 24 hours for your boxes to get to you, you shouldn't need to treat boxes from us any differently than you're treating any other box delivered to you.
The California-based warehouse and fulfillment company we'd been using for some logistics shut down briefly due to the Shelter In Place order, before reopening. Three days later, they announced that they'd sold their operations to a competitor. We never planned to use them for Keyboardio Atreus fulfillment, since shipping stuff from the US is always a bit more expensive than shipping it from Hong Kong. It looks it's going to get even more expensive in the coming months.
Freight shipments from Asia to the US are typically either sent by ocean or by air. Ocean freight typically takes over a month to get stuff from southern China to the western United States. It looks like, for now, ocean freight availability is still ok. But air freight, which we might have to use to meet our delivery commitment, has been getting much, much more expensive. A lot of air freight is shipped on commercial flights. And there are not a lot of commercial flights right now. According to one report we read, this might end up tripling bulk air freight prices from Hong Kong to the US for months. If you're curious to read more about the status of the shipping market, Flexport puts out a weekly update.
The couriers we're using from Hong Kong often have their own planes, which helps keep their rates steady.
If shipping rates do go up, it will eat into our profit margin. We won't ask you to pay anything extra.
We can't visit our suppliers any time soon.
Typically, we'd plan to go to the factory to oversee the first mass production run of keyboards. That's probably not going to happen this time. We do have a project manager on the ground in China who will be able to visit on our behalf. He's been working with us since 2017 and has proven himself trustworthy. Between our project manager on the ground, DHL-shipped samples, and daily WeChat conversations, we've been able to bridge the distance fairly well.
And Jesse spent time at the factory in December debugging a lot of the issues we might ordinarily expect to be working through as we get the first production run out the door. We've also already done an 80 unit "DVT" test run and have a 150 unit pilot run that the factory will execute prior to the first mass production run.
We can't do a roadshow.
When we ran the Kickstarter campaign for the Model 01, we had spent the month on a roadtrip, hosting meetups at 25+ makerspaces across the US and Canada. These days, we have a three year old son. We were never going to be able to do another coast-to-coast trip, but we were hoping to at least host events in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. That's not happening. We're pretty bummed out about this one.
Since you won't get to touch a Keyboardio Atreus in person during the campaign, we designed a papercraft version you can print out and tape together.
We're not as productive as we'd like to be right now.
We've been working from home for years, so the Shelter In Place order covering California hasn't hit us as hard as it has a lot of people. However, with childcare and schools closed, we're not as able to get solid workdays in. Moments ago, our son walked in and asked "What are you doing?" When we explained that we were telling our customers what's new, he nodded, said "ok"... and then made a grab for a prototype keyboard.
And of course, with everything going on, it's harder to get things done. We're feeling extra-glad that we did most of the design and engineering heavy lifting before launching the project.
We don't yet have a lot to show for the wooden keycaps idea we talked about in our first backer update. Since we wrote, we've spent time in our CAD tools cleaning up our initial design and figuring out our plan for CNC milling.
It's hard to go shopping right now. Luckily, we often prototype things out of wood, so we've got plenty of that in our garage.
What we don't yet have is an "end mill" (basically a drillbit designed for a CNC router) that is small enough to attempt to mill out the cross shapes in the middle of the keystems, which are only 1.1mm wide at their narrowest. We've ordered the parts we need. As of now, everything should arrive by Friday, so we may be able to take a first stab at this over the weekend. When we do, we'll take a bunch of pictures.
Stay safe, flatten the curve, and take care of each other,
<3 Jesse + Kaia