Time Spent: 30 minutes
I did some light research on layouts and steno keyboards. A lot of sources point towards Plover, which is also what QMK docs suggest, which means less work for me to do!
I then made a layout based on what I learnt, and printed a plate for that.
While the plate was printing, I modelled a case for it too.
Finished working on this thing and ordered the PCB!
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!
KEYCAPS i need keycaps so I printed some and it took a few iterations but it finally fit the stem properly yippeee
I also made a render while my printer was doing printing stuff. An issue I had was that the plate only sat on the case and was loose? so I also printed a small accent border, and that also acted as a nice anchor for the plate to stick to the case!
And here’s the final result! I do think the ironing on the plate could’ve been better, but I’m proud of it regardless!
By this point, making this PCB was quite straightforward as well. I placed all the components and added the components. I shifted the USB C and main mcu to the left side, and the wireless stuff to the right solely because I wanted to keep both on an edge and it would look awkward and unbalanced all together. Routing is pretty easy too. The only things that needed some focus was the USB Differential pair and the QSPI length matching. I got the radio module lengths down to a 10mm difference, which isn’t that good but it should be alright :p. I might fix that later though.
I started making the schematic by referring to the RP2040 Hardware design docs, as well as the docs for the Radio Module 2 and some of the other stuff I used. Most of this time was spent back and forth reading docs, picking ICs and figuring it out. I guess at one point, that’s just how all PCBs work huh.
The RP2040 is pretty standard stuff, give it 3.3V, a decent QSPI flash chip and decoupling and it works like a charm. The Radio Module 2 was a bit interesting, but I just ended up following what the docs did word for word, wireless is something I really don’t wanna fuck around and find out :/
The Buck/Boost is fun! I put in a TI TPS63001, which gives a nice 3v3 voltage with minimal stuff! I added 2 diodes to prevent backfeeding into USB or the battery, and installed a TP4056 in conjunction with everything else.
Time Spent: 2 hours
Soldering time I guess :p
Honestly, it’s not that hard with how few switches there are. I will say that these Gateron KS-33 switches have a really annoying pin placement, so I had to be extra careful with my soldering this time. I decided to go for a COL2ROW layout, only because that is the orientation I soldered the first diode in. After that, I connected everything to a pico and boxed it all in! I just needed keycaps now and I should be good to go :)
I didn’t really take pictures during the process but here is the end result!
