ZMK State Of The Firmware #2

Welcome to the second ZMK "State Of The Firmware" (SOTF)!

This update will cover all the major activity since SOTF #1, preparations for the upcoming Hacktoberfest activity, and a current open call for community feedback on a ZMK mascot.

Recent Activity

So much going on in ZMK!

• Added a new generic Hold Tap behavior in #146 which now powers mod-tap, layer-tap, etc. - okke-formsma
• BLE profile/connection management in #133 - petejohanson
• Integration tests were added to automate testing of behaviors in #131 by BrainWart & petejohanson
• Toggle layer behavior, e.g. &tog LOWER, in #98 - BrainWart
• Key fix for dropped press/release over HID #93/#96 - careyk007 & petejohanson
• Code formatting standardized using clang-format in #183 - petejohanson
• Bootloader reset behavior, e.g. &bootloader, in #116 - petejohanson
• Various bug fixes and documentation

New Shields

• QAZ in #130 - tominabox1
• Iris in #151 - kurtis-lew
• RoMac 2.1 in #122 - bmcgavin
• Sofle in #118 - CrossR
• splitreus62 in #92 - Na-Cly

New Boards

• DZ60RGB rev1 in #166 - Nicell
• nrfMicro in #101 - okke-formsma
• BlueMicro840 #91 - Na-Cly

Hacktoberfest Preparation

Hacktoberfest is a yearly celebration of open source, which encourages participation in OSS, especially from new contributors.

The ZMK contributors have been busy preparing for folks to join in on the fun by contributing to ZMK!

• There is now a basic Contributing Guide to help newcomers get oriented, and get up to speed.
• The Hacktoberfest issue label will help participants discover good issues to work on. (The existing good first issue label also helps with this)

We're looking forward to the launch of Hacktoberfest!

Mascot Selection Feedback

The ZMK project would like to settle on a mascot! We're soliciting community feedback as part of the process before a final mascot is selected.

The current mascots up for consideration are:

• Griffin
• Peregrine Falcon
• Zapata Wren
• Zorro (south american fox)

If you're interested in helping with the decision, head over to Issue #195 and add a reaction!

Coming Soon!

There still lots of activity in ZMK, and plenty of exciting upcoming changes.

• Improved modifier infrastructure, including "shifted keycodes" - okke-formsma
• Battery percentage reporting over BLE - Nicell
• Complete defines for HID keycodes/usage IDs - innovaker
• Additional core BLE connection/bond management work - petejohanson
• Improved power management - petejohanson, Nicell
• One shot mod/layer behaviors - okke-formsma

Statistics

Some statistics of interest for ZMK:

• GitHub
  • 115 Closed PRs
  • 64 Stars
  • 48 Forks
• Discord Chat
  • 186 total registered
• Website (last 30 days)
  • 7.4K page views
  • 474 new users

Thanks!

Thanks again to the numerous contributors and users who have made working on ZMK such a pleasure!