Lily 58

The love of the the last keyboard

The Voyager is a thing of beauty. Is basically perfect as a split keyboard. And I really love it.

So, Why spend some $250 on a diy kit for a lower quality kit to build a keyboard that does exactly the same thing, but most likely much worse.

Why? Because its different.

Its a different philosophy.

I view the Voyager as something like a Mac. It just works. Its a little different, but its pretty and made of aluminum and its set up from the start. It always works. And its perfect for work. Its perfect for when you want your hardware to just work like you expect it to.

The Lily58 is something entirely different. Dont get me wrong, its a beautiful piece of tech, well designed and meant to kind of just work. But most people don’t know how to solder. Theres a minimum bar to entry that would scare away a lot of people. And for that, you get something that is of diy quality. It has a 3d printed case, and exposed headers and you need buy everything piecemeal.

And it doesnt come with a cable unless you pay extra for it.

The difference.

This isnt the difference between Mac and Windows. This is the difference between Mac and Linux. This is a build your solution kind of product. Where the Voyager asks you to modify your solution, the Lily demands you figure out how your product works. You have to order your parts, solder your controller headers, install all your keys, install your keycaps, attach everything in the case, compile your firmware, and flash it. Thats how you make it it minimum viable product. This is everything it takes just to figure out if you bungled a solder or if somehow the controller was bad.

With the voyager, you pull it out of the box, and plug it in.

And thats the simple difference. Because, when you have to build something, you understand it better. You build a bond with it. Its a thing that cannot be replaced, because the building of it changes you. Money is cheap when compared with the cost of time. Especially when you’re a Software Developer.

And theres a certain coolness factor to cool hacker shit. To exposed wiring and boards and pins and little exposed things. Its just cool. And theres something that I just love about that.

Because, the difference with these sketchier, diy keyboards is that they are different. They’re fun to type on, knowing that they only work because I put them tommorrow.

And I think that thew are the reason I’m going to learn how to touch type entirely without the use of key legends.

Because, as I type this very document with the lily keeb, on my first day with these boards, I can already almsot perfectly touch
type, save for the fact that the thumb keys need to be moved around and the timing for the home row mods is off, and I need to recreate the layers used on my voyager config. But, to be honest, those kinds of things arent essential to being able to type. They’re essential to me navigaging on my work dev environment, mainly because I dont like using a mouse, nor any of the windows keybinds.