For a while, the Keyboardio [1] Model 01 seemed destined to never ship. Although its 2015 crowdfunding campaign raised over five times its goal of $120,000, production was repeatedly thwarted by problems with manufacturers and quality control – all of which is recorded in painstaking detail on the company blog [2], and which should become required reading for any would-be hardware vendor. Yet despite everything, in November 2017, the Model 01 keyboard finally began shipping. Although shipping is still seriously backlogged, the Model 01 (Figure 1) turns out to be worth waiting for, both as a high-end ergonomic keyboard and as one of the most customizable pieces of open hardware ever produced.

Figure 1: The Model 01 straight out of the box.

The Model 01 is a mechanical keyboard built with Matias keyswitches [3] that are not only longer-lasting and easier to repair than the usual cheap membrane keyboards, but require less pressure to activate than standard keyswitches. The minimalist keyboard of 64 keys ships with three layers – that is, key bindings that can be activated while pressing a command key, just as the default lowercase keys produce uppercase letters when the Shift key is pressed. With the Model 01, pressing the Num key activates the number pad and arrow keys, while pressing the Fn key activates the 12 function keys, Delete, and square and curly brackets. The default layers are illustrated on a laminated sheet that ships with the Model 01.

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