In the split keyboard scene the Corne Classic, and all of its variants, are well recognized by the users, mainly for the layout and, being a fully open-source and QMK compatible board, its customizability.

During the early October of 2021 I started working on another split keyboard, the Helix HS Choc, and while browsing discord servers, Reddit and Twitter posts I’ve come across this post on Reddit by a user named medwa.

I was immediately attracted by one specific piece: the Corne ECWL. In a nutshell, it’s a Corne but uses electro capacitive switched (EC) and it’s wireless (WL). The picture suggests that the actual switch used is a NIZ EC and not a Topre construction. Let’s remember that Topre is EC, but not every EC is Topre!

This board stuck into my head, so much so that I continued investigating the Corne ECWL for the following days. It’s not a common thing to see such niche pieces around. I managed to trace back the creator of the original board: せきごん (Sekigon). He is a very well-known Japanese designer with lots of projects on his back, like the BLE Micro Pro, the Keyboard Quantizer and many others.

Searching around I’ve managed to find the build guide repo, which has a part list and pictures showing the board up-close. The build guide is in Japanese only but it’s pretty easy to follow, both visually and with the help of translator tools.

After some more search I’ve found this posts thread on his Twitter account (_gonnoc):

https://twitter.com/_gonnoc/status/1291911643677331457?s=20&t=479FpcH0siwdPjbh0qgzcA

https://twitter.com/_gonnoc/status/1305445105638105089?s=20&t=479FpcH0siwdPjbh0qgzcA

Needless to say that I immediately went on and got a copy of the pdf from BOOTH.

In there you can find some pretty interesting design considerations, like analog circuit discussion, PCB layout choices and simulation data for the electrocapacitive circuit sensing. A great resource that can give ideas for other boards too.

The pdf itself doesn’t provide actual gerbers or KiCad project files so from now on I needed to do a bit of reverse engineering work that will allow me to have a final PCB that not only is fully operational, but also compatible 1:1 to already existing accessories and firmware for the OG board.

Continue to the next page: Ask and you shall receive