Nyquist/Levinson Rev. 5 PCB Kit - 60%/40% Split Ortholinear Keyboard

Just built a full nyquist because they un-discontinued this board and released a rev5! Holy heck! It's got per key rgb now and kailh hotswap sockets? Amazing.

Coming from my levinson (this board with the bottom row snapped off and a layout thats the same but without numkey row), which was a rev2 board from like 5 years ago, wow! What an upgrade. There have been so many improvements since I last built this. The aluminum plates are much nicer than the clear acrylic which, while I'll admit has a transparent glassy look that I'm in love with, also has the unfortunate tendency of being scratched by gusts of wind and showing every bit of dirt you can imagine. Also the standoff bumpers make it way more stable which is nice. And since the switches are clipped into the plate and not soldered into the pcb, they're all perfectly lined up which, due to my bad soldering, is much harder to achieve when assembling the old version. Also it was easy to put together. Overall hardware is wayyyy better and more feature complete with this edition and it's my grail for that reason.

Getting this set up with a custom QMK build is basically the same. my old layout needed very minor changes to be adapted to the newest board. QMK is still basically what it is, but due to the newest microcontrollers in use, there's no need to solder in a microcontroller and flashing doesn't require ten different kinds of software. It's as simple as setting up QMK MSYS, compiling a keymap, customizing it, recompiling it, then clicking the reset button twice and literally dragging a single file onto the board like it's a flashdrive. Boom! Need to change something? Edit, recompile, flash both sides, I can do it less than a minute. I won't go on about the merits of on-board firmware vs pc software for customizing keybinds, I'll just say this, if you're considering this board and know about that stuff, this is by far the best implementation of I've seen so far.

Grail board; I will never get rid of it or use another board unless a lightning strike burns down my house.

Sad to learn the Nyquist has been discontinued. Ever since I built mine I can hardly bring myself to use any of my other boards. There's not really anything else on the market that fits the niche this filled - 60% split ortho without column stagger.

I've been working on a wooden case for mine and was hoping to pick up some additional PCBs just to have extras to experiment with without tampering with the one I use for work every day.

I have built a levinson rev 2 I think as well as a nyquist (converted to levinson layout) and unfortunately my cat just broke mine (don't ask). I was super excited to see the latest revision of this has usb-c connections (trss seems weird) and hot swappable switches (I would pay so much to upgrade my current setup with that).

Maybe it's just my hand but I hate columnar staggered boards. When I rest my fingers on a desk, they sit in a line. I don't get the popularity of boards like the li ly58 or iris or whatever not because they're bad boards but because they feel uncomfortable to use. I've been looking and there doesn't seem to be a single alternative to the nyquist out there. The foldkb is interesting, but what it makes up for in keysets it lacks in uniformity of layout. I just find it really sensible that every button is shaped the same as it aids my forming muscle memory to not have to consider differing sizes of keys. Think about learning to play the piano; it would be weird if the keys were also different sizes.

I hope keebio brings this back because it's an awesome board and perfectly designed. I would think the lack of businesses selling this layout puts it at an advantage, but I haven't seen the sales numbers. In the meantime, I'm going to have to research hand-wiring boards.