Driver

You do not need a driver to use the keyboard, and the dip switches help change layouts as well. There are some things that are GUI based, however, and that is where the Layout Designer comes in. Note that there is official support for Chrome and Firefox only, and I only tested in Chrome.


This tool is pretty simple to use and relies on drag and drop from existing layouts. Alternatively, you can even type in corresponding key functions if you have another keyboard available, and note that all this can be done without the Truly Ergonomic Keyboard even plugged in. The instructions on the page do a good job of explaining everything, and there are up to six layers of programmability you can have - maybe one for Windows and another for MacOS? It is up to you, so you can change the layout to how you like it. Once done, save the firmware as a hex file.


Now, go to this page to download the firmware flashing tool. The download is an archive with the flashing tool as well as the default layouts included, which is nice to have as backup. Load the hex file with the keyboard plugged in, flip dip switch 5 to OFF (to make it programmable) and click on "upgrade." The progress bars, when finished, will confirm that the firmware was flashed to the MCU, and you can now hit exit to close the tool. Truly Ergonomic has prepared a page for default layouts as well as another page for some alternative layouts to choose from, although the aforementioned designer is always an option too.

There are some caveats here - the MCU does not seem to like USB 3.0 ports very much, and sometimes the flashing tool gives an error or simply does nothing if a USB 3.0 port was used to connect the keyboard. No such issues with USB 2.0, but this is a negative point in 2017, and I encourage the company to update the hardware accordingly. Secondly, if you or the tool messes up during the flashing process or you perhaps loaded an incorrect firmware file, the keyboard may get bricked and need a reset. Please refer to the previous page to see how to reset the keyboard, and unfortunately, it does involve its disassembly, so this process too needs to be improved - however rare the instance may be.