¶ Bruce The Keyboard
Bruce The Keyboard (designed by whydobearsxplod) is what an unsplit 10u column-stagger board would be if its keys were stretched so it fit into a rectangular footprint. It is important to note that Bruce The Keyboard is a keyboard and not a human.
Build/photo by Chronomap
¶ Overview
Bruce KLE is available here.
Whydobearsxplod designed Bruce around the same time as the QAZ, as a way of taking a Le Chiffre and contorting it into a rectangle. There is no canonical Bruce The Keyboard case, but there are several options, most of which are open source.
The natural progression for the 40s community was to later support the creation of the Bruce Le Clavier, a unibody split version of Bruce The Keyboard, more similarly mimicking the original influence of Le Chiffre. This version has the same number and shape of keys in the main cluster(s), but allows a central encoder or switch, much like Le Chiffre.
¶ Cases
¶ Open Source
- "Not The Human" case by Chronomap
- Boxy Bruce by Seirin-Blu
- Bruce The Menhir by Seirin-Blu
- Hull-style case by CyberJedi
- Chonky Bruce by CyberJedi
- stripesGS by grezeh
- Humane by Jake of P3D store (Notion link)
- Casegen
¶ Closed (or obscured) Source
- Debossed case by whydobearsxplod
- Hex case by whydobearsxplod
- MFR2-style case by Seirin-Blu
- Tofu-style case by Swear Wolf
- Bent Steel case by flyingika
- Travel Case by Octonite (one-off)
¶ PCB Iterations
Bruce The Keyboard The PCB was designed by JLW and sold in differing quantities for each revision.[1]
¶ Round 1
Bruce v1 PCBs were manufactured as a small batch (15 PCBs). They were sold informally through discord in January 2024. This PCB was tray mount only and had a blue soldermask.
¶ Round 2
Bruce the Keyboard The PCB v2 made small adjustments. Sold through jlw-kb.com (jlw's website) in February of 2024, this revision added plate mount cutouts in the corners to allow for compatibility with plate mount cases/plates.
¶ Round 3
Revision 3 (Released in March of 2024) added rotated switch footprints to alleviate potential issues with switch/keycap stem orientation conflicts. The soldermask was changed to black and the silkscreen was changed slightly.
¶ Bruce Le Clavier
These PCBs were also sold on JLW's site. Featuring the black soldermask and rotated switch footprints of the Bruce The Keyboard The PCB v3, it was released around the same time (late March, 2024) in advance of any cases that supported it.
¶ Availability
jlw has PCBs for sale as of writing this page. Restocks are intermittent. 3D printed cases and plates are also available through the same site.