Setting up homerow mods with usevia - for Nuphy Air v2

okay so in the previous video I gave a quick little demo of uh this guy the Nui air and I explained how it's a pretty likable keyboard because you can kind of program it what I briefly showed is that you can use this web app um use vi. apppp um to basically reprogram what some of these keys do and uh I also argued that there were some ergonomic properties and stuff to like so what I would like to do in this video is just do a bit of a deep dive to show um folks how I actually configure this board uh to something that I think is quite likable and that allow me to also discuss some syntax and um some features while also at some point mentioning some of the um setbacks of this um configurator it doesn't do everything it does a whole bunch but uh there's still stuff to learn here so um without further Ado this is what the keyboard that I've got uh looks like from the config Fator um there's a few things I think will be good to uh kind of point out uh just for starters so just for starters right here right um You will notice that on this keyboard the backspace is empty uh just like the return key uh those two keys I've now currently set to not do anything I can hit those buttons willy-nilly but the whole point is that those two buttons don't do anything because that would be causing lots of hand movement in that direction and I kind of want to reduce that so by setting those two keys off completely I'm basically using that as a forcing function for me to maybe um get into a better habit so what did I do instead well I move the enter key to shift so where there used to be a shift key over here there is now an actual uh Enter key and I have moved backspace onto caps lock which is also a button that I rarely use um but it is a button that's pretty comfortable to reach from the uh sort of Home position of your hands like if you have a look at the keyboard itself you'll find that there's like a little nib for the J key and there's a little nib uh for the F key uh that's kind of the indication where your hand should be in resting position um it's not a hard rule but it's um it's recommended practice and you can see that my pinky can just very comfortably hit all of these keys so U just to show how that works I'm going to go to Sublime Text right now so just to show that this actually works I can uh type some text here and then if I hit caps log you can see that the text goes away and you can see that when I hit shift uh then I hit enter so um so far so good that's all stuff I can configure from this configurator however um what you'll probably also notice if I hover over my little caps lock key over there then you actually see that there's a little bit of extra information in particular you'll notice that it says LT then a three then KC backspace so what you're basically looking at here is a key that's kind of been programmed to do more than one thing and the thinking here is that if I keep caps log down for a long time and don't move it back up again then the key actually activates a so-called layer so in this case the way that you should read this is um and actually I can zoom in on that uh this via app if you scroll down to this special layer over here you can select the button in question and the way that you configure this is with a little bit of code that I'll get to in a bit but once you hit this any key over here so the way you should read this is LT indicates a layer switch I'm going to go to layer three if I hold the button down and otherwise it's going to be a key press and it's just going to mean backspace that's the way that you should read this so what happens when I keep this uh little guy down well then I'm going to go to layer three and Layer Three is you know basically the standard keyboard layout it's it's really really standard but it has this one extra thing over here so Ms up means mouse cursor movement and by hitting this key over here I'm going to be able to move the mouse cursor up and the way that it's kind of configured is um my right hand's resting position over here basically kind of feels like the W ASD that you might have on some video games but just to give a very quick demo if I were to hold caps lock down and if I were now to press those buttons so J for left then you can actually see the cursor move a bit um I'm going to edit this a little bit in postp production so you can clearly see the cursor move but um by holding down caps log I'm able to move the mouse and that's kind of nice because that allows me to reduce the mouse movement um you'll also notice that there's like a mouse button uh to the side over here that actually allows me to rightclick or left click uh so just to demo that I'm going to move my mouse cursor to the bottom over here and I'm going to click it's also something I can do from the keyboard um but all these Mouse movement keys I figured let's just put that on the layer uh and I might add other stuff to it as well but if I want to move my mouse I just know keep caps lock pressed down and that's um actually pretty nice this space bar over here by the way does something that's very similar um again I'll go to special and again I will go to any kind of see the code here um space bar the way it's configured right now is again it's going to do a layer switch but this one's going to go to Layer Two if I keep it pressed down and it's just going to go to uh the space bar if I just give it a quick press so what do I have on Layer Two well what I've got here is actually very similar to uh before it's just that right now these are arrow keys technically this keyboard has arrow keys like I what I could do is have my resting position I could lift my hand and then move to the arrow keys down below here that's something I could do it's just that sometimes I feel that it's just a little bit more comfortable to just keep my hand at this base resing position and to then just use my thumb to keep um the space bar down and then just use my hands position as is to move the keys around another thing I've also added to this layer is uh I've added enter so if I do space bar e uh that's also just hitting enter I found that to be comfortable so that's something I'm just trying out but one thing that's also kind of interesting about this layer like the way it's configured is you see all these little triangles over here on all these different Keys that's something that you can actually just configure so if you go to the basic tab over here you can see this triangle um pointing down that is something you can actually uh put there but basically the way that you should think about this is if there's a triangle here it's going to go a layer up and it's just going to copy what's there so this layer really just says keep almost everything the same as in the layer before but let's add those arrow keys and maybe some small extra little things like I've also I've also got my f Keys over here where my numbers usually are that's also something is just kind of nice and useful for some apps so just a quickly quickly demo that I'm just going to type a little bit of text uh hit enter just some more text hit enter right I'm going to keep space bar pressed down I'm keeping my fingers over here and when I press I I go up K I go right J I go left and K I go back down um that is very very comfortable I find because again it's less hand movement but there's kind of a bonus uh that I've added here and it's something I've mentioned in the previous video as well if I go back to my first layer over here then you're going to notice that uh over here I have some modifications that are known as hom row mods so to dive into that uh what I'm going to do is again use this any key and I'm just going to dive into this one so the F key it reads Mt mod left shift and otherwise KCF so this is very similar to a layer switch but instead of switching the entire keyboard this is just changing the behavior of that one key the thinking is it if I just keep F pressed for long then it's kind of like keeping shift pressed down and the same thing with J so on the inside I've got shift and then all of these other buttons I've configured in a similar way it's just that uh f means shift then command then alt and then control so those are the main modifiers that you've got on the keyboard and I can very easily access them um using either one of my hands and that's actually quite convenient U so let let's just demo that so again I'll keep space bar press down and then I'm able to use my right hand to just move around as if it's like the normal arrow keys over here but as you might know if I keep shift pressed or in this case f then I can also make a selection if I hold command down on Mac then I can move the cursor around immed immediately to the left immediately to the right or to the top and the bottom of a page that's also something I can do um but alt is also nice because if I keep alt pressed oops because if I keep alt pressed down or in this case I keep s press down I also press the space bar then I'm able to move my cursor uh sort of one position at a time so that's kind of nice but note by the way that I am also able to do that with my right hand so so I can hold L down for alt and why is that useful well in this case if I wanted to hit backspace which is on caps log it can also delete a word and if I hold command down and I hit backspace then it removes everything to the left of the cursor and so there's all sorts of like clever cool things that you might have been used to doing with like shift and command and ALT and whatnot and all of that is now readily available from my base resting position of my hand and that is just pretty darn comfortable now in terms of this configurator there's actually one extra thing that is uh pretty darn nice uh and that is that you can also uh just make shortcuts a bit nicer so if you go to my second layer over here then next to this Enter key there is this m0 key and that refers to a uh macro now there's a bunch of these macro slots but if you want to uh fill it in you can go to this macro tab at the bottom and m0 over here is basically a macro that uh you could go ahead and record uh there's all sorts of ways to get this macro in you can save it but in this particular case um this macro is really just shift command space bar which on my Mac is a very nice utility so just to show you what that does is I'm able to hit space bar and then hit that macro and when I do that you can see that there are all these letters that kind of pop up on my screen and that those are just keyboard shortcuts to clickable elements in browsers so I could press J now again because there's a little J below zero there and if I hit J now uh my cursor moves to that spot um this is done via an app called home row uh this is just a shortcut for that I'll leave a link in the show notes but that's like a very nice feature I can also just um add a keyboard shortcut that's very comfortable to reach which is something I uh use a lot so yeah uh there you have it um this is stuff that you can configure on the keyboard and it does involve a bit of practice but exploring this I think is pretty nice for ergonomics and you can really make it custom in your own and what you can also think of are things like hey maybe I've got like a layer for different apps and to some extent the sky really is the limit but I do want to mention that there are like a couple of downsides to this particular board as well as this configurator there's like a few things that you can't do with this guy so one thing that I have mentioned is you can keep a um button down right that's something you can do so I can hit F and that's a different signal from just giving it a quick click however you can maybe also imagine that if I were to double tap this that I would also maybe do something and that is something that I've not been able to configure so far there is a guide I found on GitHub that has all the key codes that might be relevant like if you go to the any Tab and you want to learn the key codes that you can maybe add into that formula to to customize it I have not found anything that allows you to do a double tap um I could be missing something that's totally possible but a double tap is like one of those things that I just found kind of hard to uh configure here there is also something else though now now to explain this other thing that's just a little bit awkward with this keyboard uh I need to turn down the lights a bit and if I do that you can see that actually this keyboard does offer some RGB lighting that is something that you can configure at the moment though the way that this works is just aesthetic um you can see pretty colors appear when you're coding at night you know light kind of comes out of this in a way that's fine if that's your thing you know that's fine but the light isn't a functional what I think might be preferable is that the keyboard shows a different color if a different layer is being activated and right now that's something I cannot configure uh to my knowledge that is a limitation of the use uh via uh app U it might get upgraded at some point in the future but this is something I would like to be able to configure um you know just kind of easily and right now I just kind of can't and I do have other keyboards that actually do properly do this so here is another keyboard um and notice how there's like a couple of these buttons that are yellow um that is because those yellow buttons are home row uh buttons and I've added a color to just indicate that uh also this keyboard has Mouse mode and if that button is pressed uh you'll notice that the entire keyboard switches colors this is you know not just aesthetic but also pretty darn functional and that is something that this keyboard does not do and that's not even mentioning what I think might be one of the bigger drawbacks of this particular keyboard and that is the fact that in the end um my hand can be over here and my thumb on this side can really only press one button that's a space bar and I could move my hand slightly in maybe touch command with the thumb but that's kind of you know yeah it's kind of hard like not really the most comfortable hand movement but in a way U I've got two pretty strong fingers and the strongest fingers on my hands only have one button between them and there are also keyboards that um try to address that so One keyboard I've got over here this is a split keyboard um but this keyboard is designed in such a way that if I put my hand kind of on the resting position that my thumb can then quite easily reach um like three buttons uh this fourth button is a bit harder to reach but the thinking is still the same like maybe um you should give more keys to your thumb and maybe that's also a way that you can customize it and here is really where the field kind of explodes and there's all sorts of keyboards that you can try out and I've not even talked about how you can physically uh maybe change this keyboard because you can even change the switches so all that is stuff I hope to uh maybe talk about in this series of videos but I guess the main thing that I do want to leave you with is that um if you are really just interested in kind of getting started um and you're just looking for a cheap board to maybe add something that your standard appal keyboard does not do do then maybe something like this is probably fine um all the other keyboards I've just shown you are like pretty darn expensive and this is one of the sort of Cheaper options so that makes this keyboard still uh kind of a nice one uh in general now before you actually think you should go and buy this uh there will also be plenty of other boards that I will discuss and my goal here is really more to do education it should be totally up to you if you want to buy this board um one tip that I do have in general if you're interested in buying like uh these kinds of keyboards um do check out Ebay and uh secondhand sites because these things uh tend to be half off if you just go there but yeah um I still enjoy typing on this board from time to time even though it's not the most customizable uh it is relatively simple and I also think it's nice and easy to learn uh as far as this layout goes if you're doing split keyboards and stuff there's definitely more of a learning curve this keyboard might not be the best ergonomic thing um but you can get it to a place where it's pretty ergonomic and it's also one of the cheaper keyboards so that's definitely cool about this one now one thing before I actually forget um you might be interested in the layout that I've made over here and there's a convenient thing that you can actually do that's like a feature of this app that I forgot to mention um and that is that you can actually scroll down here to this save and load button and then you can hit this uh save button over here and this will give you a Json file with all the key codes and Maps which you can then also load if that sounds like something that you might be interested in uh I have made this GitHub gist and if you scroll to the bottom here you do actually see that Json file together with just some helpful Snippets that I've used in this video if you want to replicate some of the stuff that I've done here this should be enough to maybe help you get started uh and also there's a link in the show notes that will give you this uh key code overview uh that will also help you uh get started a bit um I only realized that I forgot to add this uh after recording the whole thing but uh here you go uh extra info go nuts

Channel: HapticFeedback

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Id: CLiZ5rAEx3A

Length: 18min 36sec (1116 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2024