The Planck EZ
The Planck EZ is the new keyboard from the makers of the Ergodox EZ. Both the Planck EZ and Ergodox EZ are open-source hardware, meaning the hardware and firmware details to build your own Planck or Ergdox are available online. I like the open source hardware model for keyboards because, unlike software, they don’t change much over time. I’m hoping to be able to use the same keyboard models for the rest of my life. If I can’t buy a pre-built version anymore, I’ll just build one myself.
The reason I use an Ergodox is that it’s a solution to the wrist angle problems a straight keyboard causes. Marco Arment wrote a succint description of this problem:
It has the vertical split common on ergonomic keyboards, and the main keys are angled so your wrists can hold your hands straight forward instead of at the slight outward angle needed to type on a straight row of keys. (The official term for the normal bad angle is “ulnar deviation”.)
Back to the Planck EZ, I prefer my mobile keyboards to be bluetooth1, but it’s great to see new release using the same formula as the Ergodox EZ.
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My mobile keyboard is a bluetooth Happy Hacking Keyboard Professional 2, which uses a layout that’s been largely unchanged since 1996, as well as serving as the inspiration for many other keyboard layouts, such as the Rama Works M60-A. ↩︎