Today I finally completed the Hackpad guide.

Here is specifically what I’ve done today:

• Placed the plate correctly where it should be and extruded it
• Made the USB cutout.
• Set up QMK on my WSL (Lots of errors, lots of time spent)
• Cloned QMK Firmware and the Submodules
• Installed the Compiler Tools and Dependencies for my Environment
• Verified the Environment with a Test Build
• Created the keyboard in the terminal
• Fixed Permissions and Configuration Errors
• Compiled the Firmware

Notes on the usage of AI:
I have used AI to explain steps I could not do when trying, and breaking down steps in the guide that were not making sense. Additionally, I used AI when building the firmware because I don’t know much about building firmware. I did not fully rely on it, and I tried to analyze and understand everything it said so I can do whatever I asked by myself next time. There is actually a funny moment that happened today. When I was editing the code (files ‘keyboard.json’ and ‘keymap.c’), I copied some lines of code the AI had told be to write. Then, at the top I wrote code starting with the word ‘cat’, and I got an error when I tried to run the code. I read what it sent again and realized that line of code was meant to be written into the terminal to write the code through it, not straight into the code. Overall, I tried my best not to rely on Artificial Intelligence and understand what it replies with.

Notes on today’s session:
This was a pretty long one I must say. I estimated I would finish this in 30-45 minutes, but it took me 90 minutes, with 150 minutes total (with all the setting up/fixing WSL’s errors). A lot of today was downloading all the compiler tools and fixing bugs/errors. When I was downloading the compiler tools, there was one tool that took alone more than 25 minutes to download! I mean, it didn’t finish after 25 minutes, but I just couldn’t wait any longer and found a command which downloaded it in roughly 15 minutes. Also, there were a lot of WSL errors. I use windows and don’t have Linux, so I used WSL, which I thankfully had already installed. The most common errors were about missing and outdated tools for compiling and libraries of my WSL. It took me about 5 commands to fix these errors, and combine that with how long they download, that’s a lot of time! Although generally, I am happy with today’s session as I am finished with the guide and ready to add my custom features.

Notes on the next session:
Next time, I will start adding some basic custom features and stuff to my hackpad. I am thinking of LEDs.