Hey folks.
Today I'm excited to announce a collaboration between myself and my
friends at keyboardio: we will be working together to produce the
Atreus 2!
I've admired their work for years, and Jesse Vincent's early blog about
his series of prototypes that led to the keyboardio Model 01 was a big
factor in my decision to pursue the original development of the Atreus
back in 2014:
https://blog.fsck.com/2013/12/better-and-better-keyboards.html
Our collaboration began when I asked Jesse to review some changes I was
considering making to the PCB; he ended up redesigning it from scratch
to incorporate an onboard controller, eliminating the "daughtercard"
design of the original.
But beyond the design, the keyboardio folks are bringing their years of
experience in manufacturing and supply chain, which I'm glad to say will
lower the cost of the Atreus 2 significantly compared to the
original. We haven't finalized the numbers yet, but I'm confident it
will allow a lot more folks to get their hands on an Atreus.
At a high level, the differences from the Atreus 2 are:
* 2 extra switches (backtick and backslash will no longer need fn)
* injection-molded case with smaller dimensions
* detachable USB cable
* default firmware is Kaleidoscope (QMK will still work)
* cherry-MX-compatible switches in sockets (removable without soldering)
* optional labels on keycaps
We haven't finalized which switches to use, but we hope to offer one
quiet tactile switch and one clicky option, or bring-your-own. The
switch sockets don't support Alps-style switches such as Matias.
You can see a (non-final) image of the new layout here:
https://atreus.technomancy.us/atreus2-layout.png
The Atreus 2 will primarily be sold thru the keyboardio store, so if you
want to get on the waitlist, you can sign up here:
https://keyboard.us3.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=664e58d3dc8a03fda94fdf943&id=b75b63f4f4
The keyboardio post has some more details if you are curious:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keyboardio/the-model-01-an-heirloom-grade-keyboard-for-seriou/posts/2646925
Let me know if you have any questions.
thanks,
Phil
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