Iris

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’ve been using a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard for around the last five years. The layout suits me, but the switches are mushy. I’ve often looked at fully split boards but been put off by the price, for example, the Moonlander looks incredible. However, the price is around $400 dollars before adding whatever random import duty comes into play.

I took a look at the excellent Mechboards site that has a series of kits available to build yourself. The advantage of building your own is the option to select whatever components you want. So for example I can select the cherry blue “clicky” keyboard switches.