My awesome macropad!

DEVLOG #6 (still havent figured out how to make a new line in devlogs) For some reason yesterday i didnt feel like working, but today i had to, even if just a little. Today i didnt do that much but it was pretty difficult cuz i had no ideas on how to make holes in onshape, but now the case is practically done! Tomorrow (i sear) i will work on the firmware

Devlog #5 Today i had a bit of time to work so i did the top part of the casing and the sketch for the buttons, but i have yet to figure out how to make the holes. Cya!

DEVLOG #4 Today i worked a bit on the casing, just to realize that the screen wouldnt fit, so i did it all over. will post a new devlog later

Devlog #3 (i didnt put the numbers on the other ones, better late than never tho) Today, i took a step back and started the case all over again. Yesterday i tried using fusion, freecad, and thinkercad but to no avail, so I went to the #hackpad channel in slack and asked for some advice, and some absolute chads recommended me onshape. i was able to make the bottom part of the box in just an hour ( most of the time spent on understanding how to use it, if id have to make it again it would take me five minutes). Tomorrow i will start working on the top part. cya!

THE PCB AND THE CASING What a day! It all started smoothly: I finished my schematics, routed the pcb, and got a preview of how it will come out. Then, i started working on the casing, and i swear i thought it would’ve been the easiest part, but was i wrong. The guide suggested fusion 360, so i looked it up, got blasted with some free trial stuff and clicked off. I then looked up “fusion 360 equivalents” and found Freecad. Mind you i never did 3d modelling. So there i was looking at tutorial after tutorial, trying to make that damned casing and when, after half an our, i finally hit pad (to make the object 3d, i just made the base layer in that time) the bottom was empty. I then let go of Freecad and tried installing Fusion 360, but it wasn’t available for arch (i use it cause my pc is slow with windows). so i then spent another 15 minutes trying to get it to work with some github scripts, but got nothing. In the and, I made my way to thinkercad, the only one i had used in the past, and i knew how to make stuff but hated every second of it. I made the chassie, used ai03 to generate the buttons’ plate (https://kbplate.ai03.com/) and ran into a BIG problem. as you can see from the photos, my pcb isnt symmetrical, so i spent another portion of my time trying to figure out how much space there was between one button hole and the other, and ultimatley gave up for the day. Tomorrow i will probably make the top part of the chassie myself, also because i included a knob and a 0.91” display, so i was forced to get there sooner or later. maybe this evening i will try setting up the QKM firmware, but probably not

Holy, i had to start over because i forgot to save yesterday, but on the bright side, i remade the design for it to be my own, so i count this as a win. The most challenging part for sure was battling with KiCad’s tools: i couldnt remember wich one did what and for an amount of time im not proud of, didnt know that you could unequipe them by pressing esc. The macropad know has: 5 buttons, a rotary encoder (wich also counts as one of the 5 buttons) and a 0.91” display (well, not really, its just the 01x04 socket connected the right way with the XIAO, but you get the idea). tomorrow im gonna work on the pcb and, possibly, the casing