@mishelkora27

So i finished laying out the switches, stabilizers, LED’s, oled screen and micro controller on the pcb. I had a bit of trouble with the LED’s because I did not realize that I needed to use LED’s that are mounted from the back so I had to place them above the switches and will have to use a transparent plate from the LED’s to shine through. I also had to create a little section above the oled for the micro controller to sit because it would not allow me to put it behind the oled where I had planned it. Therefore I had to come up with a new design. I will have to take another look at the pcb wiring because I got some errors. Overall I’m proud of my progress. I know it won’t be perfect but I’m giving it my all!!!

After I placed the switches in its placed manually, I realized that even the smallest gap could make the keycaps touch. So I used keyboard layout editor. I downloaded the json file and put it in the pcb. However I still had to place the stabilizers manually so I made sure to be very careful that it was in the correct position. Also I was going to place an origin point and move the switches like that but it was not working and the switches were either moving too far or not far enough.

I laid out all the part of the pcb part. I had to flip the switches so the hotswap would be on the back. I started putting all the switches in its place but im having a bit of trouble with the size of the stabilizers i should use.

When I tried to update the pcb from the schematic, I had some errors pop up. I was missing the footprint. I had to download a file with hotswappable switch sockets and assign the footprints. I also had to change the name of my microcontroller footprint because it was causing and error. At last I got it to work and update as it should.

I’m done with the schematic for now. I added all of the LED’s and connected all of them to the microcontroller

I changed the layout a little. I had tp move some wires and shorten them. I moves the switches up and moved the microcontroller to the side. I added 65 LED’s to be placed next to the switches.

Created a file that contains the kicad files for the keyboard. Decided on what microcontroller to use and finished the matrix wiring. I decided to also add LED lights and make it hot swappable.

I downloaded github for desktop and godot as well. I had a little bit of trouble creating a project on godot on the path of the github file but I got it to work after 2-3 tries. I also could not figure out how to link hackatime so I had to do that manually. I started designing the background on canva and that’s as far as I got.

I’m finally and hopefully done with macropad. I set up the qmk and struggled a lot through it. I kept getting warnings and errors but i got it fixed. I also uploaded everything to github. I had to zip some folders but they contained a lot of files. Overall I enjoyed the process even though it took me a really long time.

Started the firmware. I downloaded QMK firmware but was a little confused on what to type. I figured out that I had to type it line by line instead of copying and pasting the entire code on the QMK firmware website.

I finally finished the case!! After I trimmed the sides of the case to fit the Seeed XIAO RP2040, I also made the holes for the screws larger to fit the head inserts. I also made some corners around the sub c socket so that it would not wiggle around when I plug it in. I made the around the usb c socket larger to have enough space to fit the head of the cable around the usb c since the socket does not hang at the edge of the case. I also cut out the holes for the switches using the plate model and cut out the oled display space as well as some extra space underneath it to fit the other parts around the oled that are going to be inside the case. In the end I also curved the edges of the case and socket. I had some trouble figuring out how to use fusion but I’m slowly getting the hang of it. Over all I’m pretty pleased with how the case looks!! I also made sure that the 5mm heat inserts would fit and have some extra space left.

I remodeled the case because the measurements were incorrect. I moved the U1 on Kicad a little outside of the pcb because since the case’s thickness is 10mm on each side, the U1 would be too far inside the case. Although I moved it, it’s still not quite right so I will have to make the walls less thick. I had some trouble building the walls and the holes because I couldn’t figure out the margins but I got it to work my manually measuring the distances. I also placed the pcb, oled displace and switch to check where the wall of the case should end and how tall the plate/cover of the case should be.

I had misplaced the U1 in the pcb so I had to move it in order for the start of the usb socket to be at the edge of the pcb. After I moved the U1 I had to rewire some wires in the pcb and afterwards I ran the test and everything was fine. I saved the file and then I saved the pcb as gerber file to check how it looks on jlcpcb. I then moved onto Fusion and started the case. I created a base after I measured the size of the pcb on kicad and made another rectangle 3 mm larger on each size. I then extruded the larger triangle and moved the pcb step file and the lcd onto the case and checked if it fits.

Connected the wires to the switches and the U1 in the pcb. Had some trouble with placing the the components in a position where all the wires could be connected. Then once I was done with both sides of the pcb, both the red and blue wires, I moved on to the DRC and checked for any errors. I had to change the shape of the pads from oval to circle and make them smaller on the U1, which is the MOUDLE-SEEEDUINO-XIAO, because they were touching the wires and that was an error. Another error I ran into was the wires being too close to components on the switches so i had to move them and make them slimmer because they were 0.2mm away from the components. I had an issue with pad 3 of the U1 and pad 2 of the 6th switch being extremely close so once I moved U1 I had to reconnect some of the wires again.

After working for 2 hours, the app randomly closed down so I lost all progress. I had to reorganize the layout of the pcb and took this opportunity to change some things around and how it will look. Also made some space in the corner for an oled screen. Tried to connected the wires on the pcb but couldnt get the placements right so i deleted the wires I already have and will retry.

Downloaded the kicad files and uploading them. Had some difficulty with finding the files and organizing the keyboard switches.