Support for the (upcoming) Kinesis Advantage360

[stapelberg]

See e.g. https://twitter.com/kinesisergo/status/1397335511694381058?s=21

That keyboard is not yet released, but I’m filing this issue anyway so that people can contribute details or subscribe for status updates

[aaronjensen]

@stapelberg are you still thinking about working on this? I'd be interested in a fully-wired 360 w/ QMK personally, but no idea how feasible that is or if you're going to be looking at ZMK now 😄

Oh, and thank you for all your work to date. I've got a stapleberg mod and have a kint41 on the way. Your work has greatly improved things for me.

[stapelberg]

I received my 360 (non-pro) recently, but haven’t had a chance to open it up yet. I’m not quite decided as to what I’ll do, or even what is possible :)

[aaronjensen]

Ah, good stuff. I'd be curious to see a teardown from you some day :)

[aaronjensen]

@stapelberg is it possible and have you thought at all about flashing the Pro version with QMK and figuring out a way to connect them?

[stapelberg]

Kinesis says the linking between the modules is always wireless on the Pro: https://twitter.com/zekjur/status/1470864813387616258

I can’t say yet what’s possible, as I don’t have a Pro version yet — they haven’t shipped yet.

[stapelberg]

Here’s a video of my first look at the Kinesis Advantage 360: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHXmW87_WpY

[brandondees]

got mine in tonight. let me know if there are specific questions i can help answer.

not sure what the benefit of converting this to QMK would be, but i'm not too familiar yet with ZMK or how it differs from QMK.

[jfrankl]

@stapelberg what is your evaluation of the 360 Pro in terms of latency? I am considering buying a 360 Pro because QMK/ZMK firmware is needed for my layout, but wireless isn't important, and my one concern is lag.

[stapelberg]

I haven’t done an end-to-end latency measurement yet, but what I can say is that it ships with 10ms USB polling interval, which you can reduce to 1ms: https://twitter.com/zekjur/status/1572327757849174023

[aaronjensen]

FYI, there is a 2.0 branch that uses ZMK latest, which defaults to 1ms: ReFil/zmk#3 (comment)

[stapelberg]

Oh, thanks for letting me know and for getting this merged! :)

[aaronjensen]

Ah, I didn't get it merged, it was already upstream. And no problem.

[AI-Guru]

Interesting! Just dropping by to say that I would love to see the possibility of QMK on Kinesis 360 Advantage (non-pro).

[stapelberg]

Someone would need to do the reverse-engineering for it.

With the 360 hardware, you can’t just swap in a new controller — the PCB has a much more complicated form factor, and a lot more intricate components on it. The only possible solution I see is to keep the PCB as-is and flash a new firmware. But I don’t know which micro controller they used and how open it is.

We’re talking about a lot of development work, with the additional “problem” that most people who care about free firmware just buy the 360 pro instead… Personally, I have no plans to do anything about the 360 non-pro.

[pepsiplease69]

I personally am looking for the possibility of using qmk on the non-pro version because of the auto-shift feature in qmk.

The stock firmware has some tap&hold functionality but it’s not recommended for the alphanumeric keys.

I’ve opened a ticket with kinesis support to ask for the auto-shift feature in the form of a firmware update. Let’s see what they say.

I’ll send updates as anything develops.

I’ve easily been able to desolder the switches and install my favorite boba u4 so, at least that was good about the design.