First Start & Tutorial

Firmware v1.0.0+first-run tutorial

The first time a PolyKybd starts, it plays the Eden intro: comets stream across the keys and gather into POLY KYBD and SPLIT 72, then the letters dissolve and stars twinkle on the dark board. Then the keyboard shows you around. It lights the key it wants you to press, makes that key pulse, and circles it with a ring. The two status displays tell you what to do.

The intro

The intro plays across every keycap at once. The letters are gone after about 13 seconds:

1. Comets. Bright streaks stream from left to right over a faint haze of rings, while the backlight runs a rainbow across the board.
2. Letters. After about two and a half seconds the comets gather and the letters form: POLY KYBD on the left half, SPLIT 72 on the right. The rainbow fades out as they appear.
3. Hold. The haze clears, and the letters stay up on their own for a few seconds. Then every second line of each keycap goes dark, one key after another.
4. Fade. The letters dissolve into black.

From the moment the letters are solid until the tutorial starts, small stars appear on random keys, swell and fade again. When the tutorial follows, the keys stay dark with stars for about four more seconds while the status displays say Welcome to PolyKybd. Then the first step starts, about 17 seconds after the intro began.

What the video shows

The video is a render of the board, not a recording. Each keycap shows the frames of a simulation of the firmware’s own drawing code, and the backlight runs the same rainbow and fades out at the same moment as on the keyboard. The backlight is drawn brighter than the keyboard shows it, and a dim room light is added so the board stays visible once the backlight is off.

What it shows you

The tutorial has ten steps. The top-right key counts them, 1/10 to 10/10.

Step	What you do
Letters	Press three lit letter keys.
Shift	Hold each Shift, first on the left, then on the right, and watch every legend change.
The board	Every key lights up, starting at the Shift you just held: 72 screens, one keyboard.
Languages	Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Thai, Japanese and Korean, then Elvish, runes, Aurebesh and Braille. The keys spell each name, in Latin on one half and in the language’s own script on the other, and then show the whole layout.
Language menu	Press the Lang key, then the region tabs, then Base to go back.
Emoji	Press the emoji key, a few category tabs and the page key, then Base.
Fn and Num	Hold Fn, then Num, and look at what each layer puts on the keys.
Accents	Hold Intl to see each letter’s accent. Then hold Intl, tap Ctrl, press the letter the tutorial lights and pick the accent it lights. Finally, hold Intl again and press that letter.

Nothing reaches your computer

The language step only changes what the keys show. Your computer keeps its own keyboard layout the whole time, and the tutorial never types anything into an open app.

The language step shows only the languages your keyboard can draw. Most of them come from the font pack, so on a keyboard whose font pack hasn’t been installed yet, the tutorial skips that step.

One setting is kept

The accent you pick in the last step stays picked for that letter afterwards. To change it, do what the tutorial showed you: hold Intl, tap Ctrl, press the letter, then press the accent you want. See Choosing which accent a letter types.

Skipping it

Hold Esc for one second at any point. The Esc key reads “Hold to skip…” for as long as the tutorial runs. A skipped tutorial counts as seen, so it won’t come back on its own.

Seeing it again

The tutorial plays once per keyboard. The keyboard remembers that it has played, even across firmware updates. To see it again, open the settings layer, tap More… and press the Eden key. The intro plays right away, followed by the tutorial. See Keymaps & Layers.

Updating from an earlier firmware

Keyboards updated to 1.0.0 from an earlier version have never recorded the tutorial as seen, so they show it once after the update. Hold Esc to skip it.

Note

The tutorial runs on the split72. The split42 has no Eden intro, so it doesn’t show the tutorial either.