hwsplit

Time Spent: 2 Hours

I decided that it’s okay for my keyboard to have 2 USB cables if it means I get vial, so I quickly whipped up and compiled vial firmware and flashed it, and it worked like a charm! Matrix tester helped me debug some solder connections and I swiftly fixed those, and then assembled the cases once and for all.
Here’s how it turned out!

I quickly remodeled some old keycaps I had for a previous render and sent them off to the printer. After the plate finished printing for the right half I started attaching and soldering switches for that, but I need to desolder more switches from the previous attempt so I didn’t complete it. After around 3 hours, all the keycaps finished printing and I am pretty proud of the result from that. Here’s a picture!

I took the time to deepen out the cases 4mm more so that I have more headroom for the pico to be inside. I made a quick QMK firmware to see how it works, and spent the next hour reading docs and trying to find out how to do split keyboards that follow my mirrored matrix. I couldn’t find that many resources, so I might just write my own code later, but I did somehow get it to show up in Vial?
Anyway I had spent too much time on QMK with no tangible results, so I took a break here.

Armed with the new knowledge and skill on how to handwire keyboards, I started the left side of the keyboard!
I first added all of the columns, because that was the easy part. I added a small wire connecting to the space-square since it was quite straightforward.
After this, I added some tape to the parts between the switches to prevent shorting the columns and rows, and started soldering the diodes
After finishing this thing, I quickly designed a small case and printed it. However, it wsa too shallow. I printed a deeper one and let that run overnight, and it kind of fit. But once I connected the USB cable, it didn’t :(
Here’s a picture of the case I printed in the morning!