Keyboard configurator

You can customize the keyboard to your liking by defining functions of each key on your keyboard. This can be done using the Keyboard Configurator. Here we will discuss what you need to know to use it to its full potential.

Interactive guide

In the bottom-right corner of the Keyboard Configurator page you will see a button with a question mark symbol ?. When clicked it will open an interactive guide that will help you quickly understand the menu layout, while the detailed explanations can be found in this article.

How this works

The configuration that you define is stored directly in the keyboard firmware. This means that the keyboard will work the same regardless of where you use it — at home, at work, etc. There is no need for any special software on given computer for the keyboard to work, it will just be recognised as a regular USB keyboard.

The process of modifying your configuration is:

1. Open Keyboard Configurator and log in or create a new account
2. Define your desired configuration
3. Save changes to the configuration on the website using the SAVE button
4. When you are ready click the COMPILE button to generate your personalized firmware
5. Use the FLASH button to load (“flash”) firmware to your device.

Make sure to press the AllowBootloader key before flashing!

FLASH works only if your web browser supports WebUSB (in practice: Chromium-based browsers). If it doesn’t or if you get any errors see the section Flashing.

Managing your configurations

On the top of the configurator page you will see a list of available configurations. These will include your own configurations and public configurations uploaded by other users.

You can only save configurations and create new ones when you are logged in — otherwise you can only use the public ones. However, even if you are not logged in, you can still modify public configurations to download them in JSON format.

When you modify you configuration you will need to use the SAVE button before you can generate firmware from it. Other operations can be found by clicking the MORE button. In this menu you can:

• decide whether it should be public or private (visible to anyone/only you)
• change the name of this configuration and then SAVE it
• delete your configuration using the DELETE button
• create a new configuration from the current one using the NEW button
• download current configuration in JSON format or upload a different one from a JSON file on your computer

Flashing

Flashing can be done through web interface (if your browser supports WebUSB) or using dedicated desktop application inscribe-flash, which is available for Windows/Mac/Linux.

When using web interface you may still need to perform some initial steps for it to work (notably on Windows/Linux). If you see any errors when using the web interface, please try using the desktop application. After following the setup instructions this should also fix problems with the web interface.

Follow the installation instructions to install the inscribe-flash application on your system. Then see the usage instructions on how to perform the flashing process.

To flash the firmware using the application, you first need to download the firmware file by clicking COMPILE followed by DOWNLOAD to save the .bin file to your computer. Then select it in the application and run. Make sure to press the AllowBootloader key before flashing!

Firmware is loaded using the USB DFU protocol so advanced users could just use the dfu-util. Still, using the app/web interface is just more convenient.

Views

Full keyboard firmware configuration consists of the following parts:

• KEYS — Keys & Layers
• LEDS — LED lighting configuration
• MOUSE — Mouse emulation settings
• GENERAL — General settings

You can move between different views using corresponding tabs at the top of the page.

There are also some additional sections that are not part of keyboard configuration (are not saved with the configuration and do not influence generated firmware):

• KEYCAPS — customize how the keycaps are displayed in your browser
• DETECT — tries to detect keyboard configuration given firmware file or it’s name

Mouse emulation

One extra feature of our keyboard is that it can emulate an USB mouse. Mouse can be controlled using special key actions Mouse Move/Mouse Click/Mouse Sensitivity (see Keys configuration).

Mouse sensitivity is controlled using “speed profiles”. Speed profiles can be configured in the MOUSE view. There are profiles for “normal” mouse movement in the two axes: X (left/right) and Y (up/down). There are also separate speed profiles for wheel scrolling and panning.

A speed profile defines the how the mouse speed changes in time when a mouse movement button is pressed. For Delay milliseconds the speed is 0, then it jumps to Start speed and accelerates up until Max speed for the next Acceleration time milliseconds. The final value is scaled by Divider. There is no concrete unit of speed so you must experiment.

Currently the Mouse Sensitivity action is not supported (has no effect).