Reverie - A dreamy keyboard from CannonKeys designed by James from AKB

Reverie / ˈrɛv ə ri /
Noun

a state of dreamy meditation or fanciful musing: “lost in reverie…”
a daydream
a fantastic or visionary idea

(From James, the designer:) It’s fitting that the core idea for this board came to me in a dream many years ago. I fell in love with the word as soon as I discovered it and I’ve been sitting on it ever since, waiting for the right project to come along so I could fully embrace the concept.

I often find myself daydreaming, and imagining I’m on an odyssey across another world far from home. Reverie serves as an outlet to depict my wandering thoughts and to capture them within the confines of a beautiful metal rectangle.

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Links
CK website
Reverie coming soon page
Join the discussion on our Discord

Feedback form link

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Design brief & history

For Reverie, the decision to make it a 65% keyboard wasn’t arbitrary. The genesis of the design centered around the aesthetics of the external weight, and in order to fit the construction of the illustration perfectly around the keyboard's complex internals, the proportions of the 65% format provided the perfect size to work with. Couple this with the fact that the 65% layout has a smaller footprint while still offering all the keys you would typically need throughout your day, and it makes for a compelling combination.

After much testing, we have decided that top-mounting the plate provides the most agreeable type-feel and sound, especially with polycarbonate. This will most likely be the default option with this board as it provides a comfortable typing experience and a pleasant sound profile across each switch type tested.

The corner plate mounts also align with the case screws, and typically we would have to compromise and move one or the other to ensure proper part clearance but that would mean compromising the desired type feel. It would also have been difficult given that the space usually reserved in the internal cavity of the case for the screwless mounts is already occupied by two daughterboards (more on those below). In this case, these were alterations that we didn’t want to consider, so we created option B.

Option B was to introduce two internal brackets which are installed once the plate has been screwed in, and when closing the case in the traditional “screwless” fashion you screw through the conveniently-placed holes in the plate to finish the case assembly. These parts are also force-broken with very soft poron gaskets, above and below, in order to control the vibronic resonance in those areas of the board. There are additional gaskets placed at the front and the rear of the case to continue this effect throughout the design as a whole.

With the great success of implementing USB hubs in other internal projects, as well as those with AKB, we wanted to continue this with Reverie. We partnered up with our friend Cipulot to develop a bespoke daughterboard set that fit within the confines of this design, consisting of a USB-C daughterboard and also a USB 2.0 hub board with 2 x USB type-A connectors. This hub unit is ideal for various devices such as flash drives and bluetooth dongles for your mouse or headset. You could even daisy chain another keyboard to this, if that’s what the heart desires.

The Reverie theme carries all throughout the board, The daughterboards are lovingly enclosed by an elegant internal weight, which also carries the Reverie theme through the internal design.

The most visually striking element of Reverie is the external weight. Our initial idea was to depict a dreamy image of resting on clouds, but that has been done expertly on the Cloudline already. After much thought (and further daydreaming), we eventually found ourselves on a cascading odyssey through the stars, and the canvas that the external weight provides contains a beautiful snapshot of that journey. In order to achieve the two-tone look, the weight itself consists of two layers which are sandwiched together when screwed into the bottom part of the case.

Reverie Gallery:

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Specifications: (the details below are accurate at the time of writing the blog post)

Typing angle: 8 degrees

Part materials (confirmed): 6063 Aluminum case & brackets, polycarbonate plate (default)
Materials (unconfirmed): Internal weight, external weight (2 layers)

Manufacturer: Hongtu

Built weight: ~1.46kg

Dimensions: 321.6mm x 117.2mm x 34.2mm

Front height: 19mm

PCB: 1.6mm, hotswap or solderable