Already contacted support about this, but wanted to see if anyone else has come across this: I was setting up my FW16 with a numpad, I was hoping to put the trackpad in the farthest right spot, but I found that the trackpad would not connect because the keyboard’s magnetic clip was pushing up on the trackpad. Short of removing the right clip from the keyboard, I don’t see a way to correct this.
Thoughts?
This is expected and normal behavior.
“The Touchpad Module cannot be installed on the right side when the Keyboard is installed on the left.”
Ah. I see.
… okay. Thanks for the info. Guess I should rtfm every now and then.
Still, I might pick up a spare keyboard to see if modding is an option.
May I suggest putting the numpad on the left side?
I know, it might seems odd at first, and you would have to train a bit your left hand to type numbers on it.
But for data entry, this is actually a configuration known to be more ergonomic: one hand enters numbers, while the other is on the mouse/trackpad.
I’ll play around with that idea…
Modding it is probably an option.
The right clip of the keyboard module is purely for stability purposes, there is no data connection through it. If you cut it off and instead secure the right part of the keyboard by glueing/taping/… it to an adjacent spacer or even numpad module, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. It’s of course highly experimental and not supported by me or anyone else in any way.
i would be very interested in the results if you attempt this. keyboard left/trackpad right is my desired configuration as well, and i found it baffling that it wasn’t supportable by the modules’ designs
I have ordered a spare keyboard to attempt the mod on. Will post my results here.
Even better would have been to remove the extra pad on the left side of the keyboard and swap the connector location on the touchpad to the left position with a dog leg cable and then you could have it where ever you wanted.
The data cable for the keyboard would have to be moved but that would have been a slight design change a lot earlier on.
Mod was a complete success, it works exactly as I’d hoped.
Slapped it into my FW16 and booted up, no issues whatsoever, and the mousepad can go in the farthest right position flawlessly.
How do you find the stability of your modded keyboard? I presume Framework has the second tab because they didn’t want it left floating at that corner.
These are only preliminary results, but so far the keyboard seems solid. I have noticed my right palm clicking the mousepad a couple times while I’m trying to type, but to be fair I’m also sitting on my bed when that’s happening. If I find any chronic issues I’ll be sure to note them in this thread; until then you can assume no news is good news.
Yeah, I wanted to use the same offset as on most laptops the back of my palm keeepsmtouching the mouse pad. Having them a bit offset with the keyboard on the left and the mosepad cental helps a bit but I was hoping for the bigger offset. I hope that enabling this might make it’s way onto a list of future upgrades.
