You spend your days at a keyboard. It is among the most universal of tools in our modern world. No matter what you make, your keyboard is an integral part of how you practice your craft. You deserve a good keyboard.

The Keyboardio Model 100 is a customizable ergonomic mechanical keyboard designed from the ground up to work the way you do. It features 64 hot-swappable mechanical keyswitches, individually addressable RGB LEDs under each custom-sculpted keycap, and open source firmware, all housed in a precision-milled hardwood enclosure.

When you’re at your desk for hours at a time, absolutely nothing beats the warm, rich feeling of wood under your palms.

 We’ve been making wooden keyboards since some of our earliest prototypes nearly a decade ago. While they’re certainly eye-catching, what really matters to us is just how comfortable they feel. We’ve built keyboards out of metal. We’ve built keyboards out of plastic. But, wood has character, texture, and luster that you can’t get from any other material.  

Whether you prefer the rich mid-century styling of walnut or the clean modern look of maple hardwood, the natural variation in grain will ensure that each and every Model 100 will have a gorgeous and unique personality.

From the positions of the keys to the shapes of the keycaps to the shape of the enclosure, we built the Model 100 to give you the best possible typing experience.

 A key layout based on your hands

 We’ve aligned the Model 100’s keys in columns so they’re easier to reach without having to contort your fingers. The keys are angled to help you keep your wrists in a natural, neutral position.

To make it as easy as possible for new typists to get started, the Model 100’s default layout is based on QWERTY. Since the physical shape of the keyboard isn’t limited by the traditional shape of a typewriter, we’ve been able to make some important improvements that make the Model 100 a dream to type on without having to learn to type all over again. (Of course, the Model 100 supports custom layouts, too—every single key is fully programmable.)

The Model 100 packs the full functionality of a 104 key keyboard (and more) into just 64 keys.

When we built the Model 01, one of the most controversial layout choices we made was replacing the spacebar with a space key. Again and again, our customers have told us that this is one of their favorite things about our layout. By making space a reasonable size, we’re able to move some of the most frequently chorded keys away from your poor, overworked pinkie fingers to easy to reach arcs right under your thumbs.

Underneath the thumb arcs, you’ll find one of the Model 100’s most unique features: the palm key. It works like a special Shift or Function key to give you the full power of a 104 key keyboard in just 64 easy to reach keys. Dropping the base of your thumb onto the palm key turns H, J, K, and L into arrow keys, turns the number keys into F-keys and even turns the WASD keys into a high-precision mouse.

You can, of course, fully customize the Model 100’s key layout with our graphical configuration tool.

The Model 100’s generous curved palm rests help support your palms and wrists and gently encourage you to hold your hands in a relaxed, neutral position, rather than bending your wrists while typing.

Custom sculpted keycaps

Most keyboard manufacturers buy their keycaps from one of a handful of keycap factories in one of a half-dozen generic shapes. We wanted something better, so we designed our own. It took hundreds of hours of engineering, but we’ve made keycaps that actually help you type better. 

The Model 100’s keycaps are individually sculpted to gently guide your fingers to the right places, following the natural curve of your hands. This makes it just that little bit easier to hit the right key with the right finger. It feels great if you already touch-type. (And it also dramatically reduces the learning curve for those of us who never learned “proper” typing.)

Hot-swappable mechanical keyswitches

The Keyboardio Model 100 features high-quality hot-swappable MX-compatible mechanical keyswitches. Mechanical switches just feel better to type on than the cheap rubber domes, or low-profile scissor switches you’ll find on most modern keyboards and laptops. We’ve been researching and testing and building keyboards with mechanical switches for nearly a decade and have picked out some of our favorites for the Model 100.

Indiegogo-edition Model 100 keyboards will ship with your choice of three keyswitch options from Kailh, each nestled in a hot-swap socket: Clicky BOX White switches, Tactile BOX Silent Brown switches, or Linear BOX Silent Pink switches. 

The keyboard industry is in the middle of a Cambrian explosion of keyswitch options. New switches are becoming available all the time. Some are extra-clicky. Some are whisper-silent. Some new switches are made from self-lubricating POM. Others are built out of crystal-clear plastic designed to accentuate under-key LEDs. Since the switches aren’t soldered into the circuit board, you’re free to experiment with them all, to find the perfect switch for you.

Programmable RGB LEDs under each key 

We’ve placed an independently programmable RGB LED underneath each and every key on the keyboard. Out of the box, the Model 100 can breathe, glow and do cute rainbow fade animations with the best of them, but the neat part is that each and every one of those LEDs is end-user controllable.

With just a few lines of code, you can completely customize the light show. Want your keyboard to start flashing red when you’ve been typing too long? There’s a plugin for that! Want a key to light up when you’ve got mail? That’s just a few lines of code.

Your hands are unique. And everyone’s typing situation is different. What works for one of us may not work for anybody else. 

We’ve designed the Model 100 to let you position your keyboard at exactly the right distance and angle for you. The two halves of your Model 100 are connected with a standard RJ45 ethernet cable. Out of the box, your keyboard comes with a 10cm interconnect cable so you can position the two halves right next to each other and a 1m cable, so you can place the two halves of the keyboard shoulder-width apart (or wider!) on your desk for a sublimely comfortable typing experience.

Adjustable octo-stands for comfortable typing

Every Indiegogo-edition Model 100 keyboard ships with a pair of custom-designed “octo-stands” which let you adjust the tent and tilt of your keyboard for extreme comfort. The stands give you a generous 7.5 degrees of angle to play with. 

You can choose whether you want the middle of the keyboard higher than the outside edges and whether you want the keyboard to be angled up like most keyboards or angled down with “negative tilt” for a perfect typing experience at a lower desk.

Tripod mounts for infinite configurability

The octo-stands are a great choice for on-desk adjustability, but we didn’t stop there. We wanted to make sure that you could position your Model 100 exactly where you wanted it, so each half of the keyboard features an ISO-standard 1/4-20 camera tripod mount, which you can use to attach a wide variety of mounting gear to the bottom of your keyboard. 

Nick Handel used camera mounting gear to get himself a vertical under-desk mount for his Model 01

Over the past few years, Model 01 users have found a wide variety of innovative ways to attach their keyboards to their chairs, desks, and even to a belt for mountainside hacking.

Michael Sloan built a belt mount for his Model 01 and may just have the best “office” of all time.

You can take it with you

Every Indiegogo-edition Model 100 comes with a free custom-formed protective travel case. The zippered travel case will keep your Model 100 safe on the road. This is the same travel case we currently sell as a $60 accessory for the Model 01.

Point and click configuration with Chrysalis

Your Model 100 ships with full support for Chrysalis, our cross-platform graphical configuration tool for Kaleidoscope. With support for point-and-click key remapping, custom shortcuts, layout backup and restore, and an upcoming interface for creating Kaleidoscope macros, Chrysalis makes customizing your key layout and LED themes easy and convenient.

Chrysalis is, of course, fully open source. You can always download it at https://github.com/keyboardio/Chrysalis

Open source Kaleidoscope firmware

The firmware powering all our keyboards, Kaleidoscope, is open source and freely available on Github. If you want to build complex macros, add in joystick emulation, or make keys do things we haven’t thought of yet, Kaleidoscope is where you’d start.

Kaleidoscope is incredibly powerful, but we’ve worked to make it newbie-friendly. We built it on top of Arduino, to make it easy for folks who aren’t familiar with embedded development or C++ to be able to do amazing things. At the same time, you’re not restricted to the Arduino IDE when working with it. If vi or Emacs is your weapon of choice, everything’s set up to build from the command line using standard tooling.

Kaleidoscope comes with dozens of plugins that provide all the things you’d expect from great keyboard firmware, like layouts stored in EEPROM, serial communications, full NKRO, steno, mouse keys, LED effects, and crazy USB tricks. Most new features can be added to Kaleidoscope as plugins. You can find documentation for Kaleidoscope and its many plugins and features at https://kaleidoscope.readthedocs.io. Source code is always available at https://github.com/keyboardio/Kaleidoscope. We’re not a QMK shop, but have worked with community members to land in-tree ports for both the Model 01 and the Atreus. We’re committed to supporting a community port of QMK to the Model 100 as well.

It comes with source code and a screwdriver 

We believe, quite strongly, that you own the things you buy from us. 

Our commitment doesn’t stop at the software. We’ve designed the Model 100 to be easy to open up and mess with. Everything is put together with regular screws, so that it’s easy to disassemble your keyboard with the included screwdriver. The switches aren’t soldered to the PCB, so they’re easy to remove and replace. We’ve placed all of the electrical components on the backs of the PCB, so they’re easy to poke at. Programming pins for the microcontrollers are exposed and labeled.

You are 100% welcome to open your keyboard up, flash its firmware, reflash its bootloader, solder weird connectors onto the circuit boards or flash our firmware onto something else. (Some of these things may void your warranty, but don’t let that stop you.) To make all of this as easy as possible for you, your Model 100 will ship with a screwdriver, firmware & bootloader source code, as well as full schematics for the electronics. 

What comes in the box 

Clockwise from upper left: the keyboard; short 10cm interconnect cable (for use with halves together); long 1m interconnect cable (for use with halves apart); USB-C cable; interconnect bars; octo-stands with mounting screws; multi-bit screwdriver.

Every Indiegogo-edition Keyboardio Model 100 reward comes with:

• Keyboardio Model 100
• Zippered travel case
• QWERTY keycaps
• 1.5m USB-A to USB C cable
• 10cm RJ45 interconnect cable
• 1m RJ45 interconnect cable
• Two octo-stands with mounting screws
• Flat interconnect bar
• 7.5 degree interconnect bar
• Keyboardio disassembly screwdriver
• Premium keyswitch puller

Your keyboard will come with your choice of clicky Kailh BOX White, linear BOX Silent Pink switches, or tactile BOX Silent Brown switches and your choice of maple or walnut hardwood enclosure. 

The switches are 100% hot-swappable, so you’ll be able to change them later.

You don’t need to make up your mind now. We’ll email you closer to the ship date to have you make your selection.

We expect Indiegogo-edition Model 100s to ship in January 2022.

Add on extra keycap sets 

This is Jesse’s personal Model 01 with Linear A keycaps.

Every Model 100 will ship with QWERTY-labeled keycaps preinstalled. But we know that not everybody types QWERTY. 

You can add sets of Colemak, Dvorak, Linear A, and blank translucent keycaps to your pledge, each for just $30.

After the campaign closes, we expect the price for keycaps to be $45 per set.

From a quick glance, the Model 100 looks a lot like the Model 01, but when you look closely or start typing on it, you’ll begin to notice some of the upgrades and improvements we’ve made to just about every aspect of the product. The Model 100 retains the Model 01’s distinctive butterfly design, but includes dozens of improvements across every aspect of the product. The Model 100 is a true reinvention of the Model 01 you know and love.

These are a few of our favorite upgrades in the Model 100:

• Hot-swappable MX-compatible keyswitches from Kailh replace the Matias switches we used in the Model 01. If you ever want to change a switch (or all 64), you can do it at home, no soldering required.
• Updated keycaps feature more subtle homing bars to keep your fingers happy, thicker plastic for a more satisfying key feel and shorter skirts for more vibrant under-key LED glow.
• A new darker walnut enclosure option looks great on just about any desk.
• The overhauled electrical design will be more robust against misbehaving USB hubs, as well as easier to maintain and repair.
• Newly reinforced baseplate plastics and updated octo-stands are sturdier, more rigid, and easier to adjust.

We’re not going to beat around the bush. If you’ve never used a split keyboard with the keys arranged in columns, it might take a little bit of practice to get up to speed on the Model 100.

Most Model 01 typists told us that they started to get familiar with the layout within a few hours. True mastery of the layout is an investment that can take a month or two to really start to pay off. 

• Switches: 64 x full-travel mechanical Kailh MX-style switches rated at 70 million+ presses
• Hot-swap sockets: 64 x Kailh sockets (Rated at 100 switch changes)
• LEDs: 64 individually addressable RGB LEDs 
• Rollover: Full NKRO (no ghosting)
• Interface: USB 2.0 over USB C 
• Included cable: 1.5m (5 ft) USB C to USB A 
• Compatibility: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, iPadOS (LED support may be limited on some mobile devices)
• Key plate: anodized aluminum 
• Microcontroller: Microchip ATMEGA32U4 or better 
• Wood enclosure: Choice of walnut or maple shell
• Dimensions: 23 x 37 x 4 cm (9 x 14.5 x 1.6 in) 
• Weight: 1.04 Kg (2.3 lbs)

To give you a sense of the size and shape of the Model 100, we’ve created a life-size printable paper Model 100. Just download this PDF and hit print. When you print it out, be sure to tell your computer to print at 100% size instead of scaling it up or down to fit the paper. If you have a US Quarter or a 1 Euro coin handy, you can use that to make sure it printed correctly. 

We’re building the Model 100 with the same manufacturing partner who helped us make the Keyboardio Atreus. While COVID-19 restrictions mean that the U.S.-based team isn’t able to visit the factory in person this time around, they’ve been a pleasure to work with throughout the Atreus production process and the Model 100 design process. Ken, our on-the-ground project manager in China, visits the factory regularly on our behalf.

To help get your keyboards built as quickly as possible after the campaign, we’ve paid for most of the tooling for the Model 100 out of pocket, even before launching this campaign.

Our Model 100 prototype circuit boards (PCBs) passed FCC pretesting just before the COVID-19 pandemic derailed well, everything in the world. Since then, a major disruption of the global electronics supply chain has caused shortages and huge amounts of pricing instability.

Since we need to adjust our designs for the new electronics availability landscape, we’re doing everything we can to sneak in a newer, much more powerful microcontroller before the early-delivery Model 100s ship. As this work progresses, we’ll talk a bit more about this in a backer update and on Twitter.

We’re working hard to secure the various ‘long lead time’ components we need to ship the mass-production run of Model 100 keyboards in January of 2022. 

We plan to fulfill the Model 100 globally using a shipping partner we’ve used before. Your Model 100 and accessories will be produced in Dongguan, China. We have shipping partners in both nearby Shenzhen and across the border in Hong Kong. Depending on timing and logistics, we may end up using one or the other to get your keyboard to you quickly, safely, and inexpensively. 

We are happy ship to pretty much any country we’re legally allowed to; if your country isn’t shown as an option, send us a message here on Indiegogo and we’ll calculate the shipping costs and add it. 

Indiegogo-edition Keyboardio Model 100s will ship duty-unpaid (DDU). You will be responsible for any tax or duties associated with your shipment. 

If you are shipping to the U.S., we expect that any pledge rewards under $800 should ship without you owing any additional taxes or duty. If you are shipping to an address outside the U.S., you will likely owe tax or duty on your pledge rewards. You can estimate how much by searching “duty calculator” and your country name, although the final determination of such things is almost always made by local customs inspectors. The HS code for computer keyboards is 8471.60.20.

 We type. 

We type a lot. 

We’ve always typed a lot.

Over the years, we’d tried pretty much every keyboard out there, but never found one we could fall in love with. We wanted a keyboard that was good to our hands, looked great on our desks and was completely customizable.

In 2012, we set out to build our own.

In 2015, we launched that keyboard as the Keyboardio Model 01 on Kickstarter. 

In 2019, we came back to launch our second keyboard, the Keyboardio Atreus in partnership with Technomancy. 

Over the last six years, we’ve built and shipped thousands and thousands of keyboards to folks in more than 75 countries. 

For the past year and a half, we’ve been working to reengineer and upgrade every aspect of the Model 01. The Keyboardio Model 100 is the culmination of that work.

Keyboardio is a tiny company that designs, manufactures and sells high-end computer keyboards. The founders, Jesse and Kaia, are a husband-and-wife team. We got our start in 2012 when Jesse couldn’t find a keyboard that didn’t make his wrists hurt and figured he’d spend a month designing and building a keyboard. One thing, as they say, led to another. Today, we have thousands of customers in dozens of countries, professional engineering and project management resources spread across three continents, and international distribution. And we’re still just as obsessed with making better keyboards.

We wish we could thank everyone we ought to by name, but we found out the hard way that campaign pages have a character limit. Here’s an abbreviated list: Thank you to our investors Blaine, Brady, Evan, Jared, Rob, Roy, and Russel; Adam and Richie at Friends ‘n Allies (the delightful Oakland-based company behind our video), as well as Whitney and Frazier who helped them make us and our product look good; algernon, Frank, and Ken for all the hard work and long hours bringing our keyboards into the world; Andre, Clarissa, Julio, Phil, Scott, and Zoelle for going above and beyond to help us get the campaign together; our families and friends for indulging us in our keyboard obsession all these years; and Ma, Penny, and Pickles for graciously agreeing to star in our video. 

And, perhaps most importantly, thank you to all our customers, backers, and open source contributors. This keyboard and this company couldn’t exist without you.