The Ferris Sweep

The simple design won me over right away. The build process was straightforward - just a single evening of soldering. I have the MX version, the switches are soldered directly to the PCB. I really appreciate the minimalism: no diodes, no LEDs, no OLED screen—just the essentials. Visually, I like that both controllers face downward on the MX build, though this does mean the buttons on the RP2040 Pro-Micro controller aren’t accessible. Because of this, socketing the controller is doubly important.

On the software side, things weren’t quite as simple. I prefer compiling my own firmware, and it took me a while to figure out how to adjust the QMK settings for this board. In the end, I settled on the following pin mapping:

#undef DIRECT_PINS
#define DIRECT_PINS { \
{ E6, F7, F6, F5, F4 }, \
{ B1, B3, B2, B6, D3 }, \
{ D1, D0, D4, C6, D7 }, \
{ B4, B5, NO_PIN, NO_PIN, NO_PIN } \
}
#undef DIRECT_PINS_RIGHT
#define DIRECT_PINS_RIGHT { \
{ F4, F5, F6, F7, E6 }, \
{ D3, B6, B2, B3, B1 }, \
{ D7, C6, D4, D0, D1 }, \
{ B5, B4, NO_PIN, NO_PIN, NO_PIN } \
}

Typing on it feels excellent - the aggressive stagger is very comfortable for me. The only drawback I’ve noticed is the weight. The keyboard out of the box is very light, and I miss the stability that a bit of weight would bring.

It's a good first split keyboard to play with, if you are willing to invest into another one after getting some experience and figuring out your needs. Otherwise you may find it lacking in terms of the number of keys and layers. It's fine as long as you need only one layout and only English language, otherwise I'd suggest looking for better options.

Very good quality kit. Works pretty well. I am happy with the completed kit.

Support via discord was excellent!
I was provided VIA and default firmware to flash. ( I used RP 2040 ). The guides section didn't have the correct info but folks on discord assisted.

I ended up flashing the board with my own built firmware that lets me define the keymap using VIAL.
Kit was delivered quickly in the UK.

Very good quality kit, although a Build Guide would've been nice. My only comments are that the TRRS cable was a little short for my needs, and the Choc switch key caps weren't available so I sourced those elsewhere. I'm very pleased I chose this UK vendor.

Speedy postage, I had an issue with one of the parts which could well have been caused by user error, the support was excellent and they sorted me out with a replacement free of charge within about a day. Can't recommend them enough and I will be back!