need the translucent letters for the backlighting and a Belgian AZERTY layout.
Good luck getting an AZERTY set. To me that seems pretty much impossible, but as Guille said, looking at massdrop is your best bet. Though for us Europeans, MD is pretty darn expensive.
CNC'd aluminum cases never cost less than $100.
Not if you buy them from Asia directly. There are also group buys every now and then, just last week one ended for about 50£ on some UK site, though that was about as expensive as getting it from Asia.
But yeah, it's an expensive hobby. Though not as expensive as building PCs, so you can build more keyboards without feeling guilty.
I'd like to see more creativity in all these new keyboards though. It seems that every single new entry on Massdrop is another 60% TMK based clone with only their case being different.
Ergodox is unique, plank is unique ... All the other, not so much. I'd love to see the chording keyboard from Deskthority coming to live, more sub 60%, keyboard + trackball, a new layout ?
Price reflects low volume manufacturing, I agree. Just so bored of " yet another $180 60% TMK".
How many 60% TMKs are there, though? I know of the GH60 and the S60-X (which was more like $120, BTW), but the Infinity 60% is running KLL and most other 60% boards are not even fully programmable at all, like the Pokers, KBParadise V60 or HHKB, they use DIP switches and built-in macro functionality.
There are a lot of 60+% boards with 65 or 68 keys and in that size category, you also see some interesting boards like the Red Scarf II+ which has a 10key function cluster to the left like IBM Model F.
There is also a lot of innovation going on in the 40% area, though that's not everyone's cup of tea. The MiniVan, JD40, JD45, Quark, Let's Split, Diverge TM and Terminus are all quite different boards and very interesting in their own right.
The problem with new layouts and such is that everyone needs something slightly different. That's the whole reason why TMK, QMK, KLL and Animus firmwares exist. The "most efficient" layout debate is
pretty much done with as well.
For a real novel approach, you might want to look at
http://www.openstenoproject.org. 240WPM with stenographic keyboard layouts is quite cool.
There's only so much that can be done with keyboards, and because everyone has such different needs, I feel like asking for more innovation is a little nonsensical. In the end, you have the option to make your board exactly the way you want it to these days.
See, I wish they had gone with an ARM because I think it'd be fun to try doing a KB firmware in (no-stdlib) Rust, and while I am nuts enough to actually do that, I'm not nuts enough to do a Rust AVR port. Well, not nuts enough/don't have enough time.
I think some of the Input Club boards are running on ARM processors, don't they?
