Hi all, I recently got into the world of ergo mech by borrowing a friend’s old Iris v2, and I really love how powerful and customizable things can be with QMK firmware.

Recently, my old n52te has started to show signs of age after a dozen or so years of abuse. If you’re not familiar, they look like this:

There’s definitely stuff that could be improved on–just being able to build your own firmware for it would be amazing. Having one or two more thumb buttons for layers would be sweet as well.

The community of ergo mech keyboard builders are doing some super cool things with 3d printed builds and all kinds of neat stuff. Since I’ve just been dipping my toes in, my question is: does anyone know of any good replacements for my n52te? Is this something anyone has tried tinkering around with?

Thanks!

  • MalReynoldsEnglish
    5·
    1 month ago

    Certainly do-able, but perhaps more of an adventure than anticipated. On the other hand, trackball works surprisingly well once you adapt.

    • boatswain@infosec.pubOP
      1·
      1 month ago

      I’m sure it does for its purpose, but the D pad is something I use frequently to control movement in a specific direction, so I wantt to be able to, for example, strafe right for a second or two; track ball seems like not a great solution for repeated consistent input like that. Track ball seems like a better solution for doing things like moving a cursor to a particular location.