I am building a 63-key keyboard using the Adafruit KB2040 board. It is a continuation of this project from fallout: https://fallout.hackclub.com/projects/3515. I designed it for fallout and recieved funding so I am not requesting funding from stardance and am logging build stuff.
I made a new keyboard schematic. I’m going to redesign this keyboard to have more keys and use per key lighting. I’m eliminating the OLED, but using the same microcontroller. I have capacitors every 4 LEDs and input 5V halfway through the chain so there shouldn’t be any fading towards the end of the chain. I’m still not sure what the issue with the old design was but I hope to figure it out.
I completely built, programmed, and have now taken apart the keyboard. It took me a couple of hours of soldering to get all of the diodes and keys placed. There is a lot of time I spend programming that didn’t get recorded because I thought it would be quick. It was not. In the end, I used Claude and Gemini and was finally able to get the QMK compiler to work. However, the .uf2 didn’t make the keyboard work properly. I tried several different ones and used the serial monitor and send outputs to Gemini but wasn’t able to get it to work. The best I could get was random characters. So, I decided to spend a couple hours removing all of the components so I can try it again on a fresh PCB. I’m not sure what the issue is and I inspected the PCB so hopefully I drag soldered something and didn’t see it or installed a diode the wrong way. I have ordered a new microcontroller because the old one broke while I was trying to remove it. Also, apparently I didn’t take almost any photos.
I started assembly. I still don’t have enough funds for the PCB (Blueprint please fulfill my order for a grant from the shop 🙏). I inserted all of the switches into the 3D printed top plate , which is a necessary step prior to soldering the switches to the PCB.
CAD work - after the first print of the top plate I realized a couple of issues. First, I hadn’t made holes for the stabilizers. Second, and this was just cosmetic, there were partial labels for the diodes from the KiCAD .step export in my top plate, which made the edges of the key holes look messy. I fixed both issues.
