wireless split kinesis contour

I finally have almost all the hard issues sorted out and I've assembled the left side of my heavily customized kinesis keyboard. Here's what's currently working:

Seamless wired to wireless operation:
Recharges when it's connected via USB, but can still be used while doing so. When disconnected, the wireless interface starts working immediately. When reconnected the wireless is disabled.

Support for 4 pointing devices:
The final keyboard will have 1 trackpoint + 1 touchpad per side. I've verified that I can support 3, and I'm 99% certain that 4 should work. I'm using synaptics touchpads and trackpoints directly connected to my microcontroller. This means I can implement distinct functionality for left and right sides- e.g. one side scrolls, the other side moves the cursor.

Runtime selectable keymaps:
I'm using a microcontroller with plenty of flash, so I have room to spare for extra keymaps (e.g. QWERTY,Dvorak,etc.). I've verified the ability to switch between them on the fly.

Remaining Tasks

At this point I need to:
solder the right half of the key matrix to the controller
build the plastic housings for each half
integrate touchpads and trackpoints into plastic housings
try to ruggedize everything as much as possible

The mechanical stuff has always proved to be the hardest for me. In the picture above the keyboard frame is still in one piece because I'm still measuring out how to integrate 2 touchpads and 2 trackpoints- there's barely enough room. A very similar issue is why I ended up postponing further work on the wireless alphagrip; it was just too hard to fit everything back inside. When I get back to working on the alphagrip, my plan is to make my own more compact keymatrix, perhaps consisting of individually soldered keyswitches to free up room vs. a full PCB.

Kinesis freestyle

This keyboard has two notable advantages over the kinesis contour: it's cheaper, and it's more accommodating of wide sh0ulders as the two halves of the keyboard can be significantly separated. You do lose a few features for the lower price- no programmability, no curved keywells, no integrated USB hub, no support for footpedals. Currently, I have this keyboard disassembled to experiment with pieces of it. Here's some pictures of the internals, as requested. The function keys are on the same matrix as the letter keys. I added the internals of a 4-port USB hub, de-soldered one of the 4 ports' connectors and soldered the keyboard's original USB connection directly to the pads of that connector. The keyboard is the then connected to a computer via the hub PCB's USB connector. Sorry for the rotated images, this was a quick update.

Kinesis contour

This is one of the first ergonomic keyboards I purchased and has many strong points. The curved keywells take some getting used to but I do find them to be superior to a traditional keyboard layout. The two main benefits I see: having the keys laid out in straight rows and slightly reduced reach due to the keys being at heights suited for each finger. The fact that the left and right hand are separated does slightly help if you have somewhat wider shoulders ( I do and this keyboard is still not quite wide enough). The separation also provides a somewhat convenient flat area to affix a touchpad ( if you can tolerate the amount of forearm pronation and elevation this would require).

I tend to work on multiple computers using different operating systems. In this context, the keyboard's support for key-remapping in hardware is quite useful since you'd otherwise have to restore your customizations at every computer you use.

In short I like a lot of things about this keyboard- but since I have issues with excess forearm pronation+elevation, I'd have to say it's simply too tall and narrow for frequent use.

I'm currently addressing both these issues by building a custom keyboard which I'll post up here soon.