Pinchord Hardware Constraints

How to fit around Hardware constraints for Pinchord:

Any keyboard can be used with Pinchord as long as it:

Has NKRO, meaning it can register any number of keys pressed down together (most normal boards can only register a handful)
Has at least 2 keys that can be pressed down together comfortably for the thumbs, middle, ring, and pinky fingers, and 3 keys that can be pressed down comfortably together for the index fingers

This graphic shows what a 5-row layout could look like:

Pinchord Layout Graphic with 5 rows rather than the normal 6

You can get away with 21 and even 20 keys, but it does require dropping -e and fitting the starters into 6 keys to remove &. See the ticket pinchord-16 Alt Layouts, since I may support this in the Plover plugin in the future :)

Having enough keys to fit the whole layout is much nicer though, of course, so I wouldn't recommend buying a 4 or 5 row board specifically for Pinchord. If you already have one though, they should work reasonably well.

The Pinboard is an example of a custom PCB for Pinchord with 24 keys:

Pinboard Keyboard