Iris Keyboard Troubleshooting

With the kit fully assembled the micro-controllers then need to be flashed. The software used to do this is the QMX Toolbox. The install of this on OSX is straightforwards using brew :

$ brew tap homebrew/cask-drivers
$ brew install --cask qmk-toolbox

I used the QMX Configurator to save a default Iris configuration and flashed it to each controller. (Don’t do this - see later).

With everything flashed and ready I plugged the board in and started to test on my Mac. The left-hand side worked perfectly, but I got no output at all from the right. I then tried plugging the right-hand side in and got strange results. It was a mirror of the left i.e. trewq mirror of qwert. On the upside, I was happy my archaic soldering skills had held up and all keys seemed to work. But obviously, something was wrong.

I tried all sorts of options using the online tool to no avail. So I reached out to the Discord channel that Mechboards run and explained my issue. Even though it was a Sunday afternoon, Tom got back to me within 5 minutes with a solution. Given this interaction, I was so impressed by him that I reccommend taking a look at Mechboards if you ever need anything in this space. The trick was to install the command line tools and roll a modification to the default firmware. i.e. adding

#define SPLIT_USB_DETECT

to

https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/blob/master/keyboards/keebio/iris/keymaps/default/config.h

and then recompiling the firmware.

With that done, I had a completely working keyboard.

I must admit that I’m slower typing in the Iris at the moment. The reduced number of keys means that a significant number of symbols and ‘special’ keys need a modifier pressing as part of a keystroke. This takes me back to my ZX Spectrum programming days. I’m struggling slightly with the key spacing compared with what I’ve been used to, but the muscle memory is starting to firm. I’m enjoying the positive ‘click’ from the keys and the ability to separate the two halves to shoulder-width apart. I’ll spend a few weeks with this as my default keyboard to see if this is ’the one’. If it isn’t, I will certainly be taking a look at other kits as it has been a straightforward exercise to build one.