Ergonomic Keyboard Setup

I started to get pain in my hands from long hours of typing so I wanted a keyboard/keyboard layout that had better ergonomics. Found the ZSA Moonlander keyboard and many different layouts, but then spent more time building my own layout that is perfect for my needs: https://configure.zsa.io/moonlander/layouts/PlGG9/latest/0

It seemed like the best option for an ergonomic keyboard was one that was split in two halves and out of all the options, the Moonlander board seemed to be the best option for me which I could start using right away so I could deal with my hand pain. Eventually I would like to build my own wireless split board. Next I wanted a layout that focused on grouping frequently used keys on the home row. After trying many different layouts it seemed that the achilles heel of them is they are too complicated and have too many layers. They would have duplicate characters across layers, sometimes you would need to remember the location of characters across many multiple layers to type up something simple. It takes too long to build the muscle memory needed to get up to a reasonable typing speed. I liked the miryoku layout (https://github.com/manna-harbour/miryoku) but it was still too complicated for my needs.

Taking inspiration from miryoku I started with a mostly Colemak layout. I programmed a python keylogger to record the keys I press and get a sense of my most used keys, this helped with reorganizing some of the letters in Colemack and placing the special characters. I wanted to keep the layout simple since I wanted to be able to get up to a faster typing speed faster. So I had limited the layout to two main layers, and one layer for changing lights on the board. One for letters and one for special characters, both with home row mods. Then I bought keycaps that had a transparent top so I could inlay paper that I had written characters on.

So far this layout has been good. I have been using this board/layout on and off for about six months while working and have now only just gotten to the point where I can use the board full time and not have it be excruciatingly slow. Now it is just a matter of getting my typing speed up and improving on the layout.