Hello!

I've been scratching a design for my new keyboard and wanted to try something fun. It's gonna be a 34-key unibody split, but I thought it would be cool to use the space in the middle for something fun. Many parts like cirque touchpads, roller encoders and such are hard to obtain in my area, so I didn't bother. Then I found a post by LazaroFilm with a small smartwatch LCD made by WaveShare and thought it would be a fun idea. I browsed their catalogue and noticed that none of the models are ideal for the job. The RP2040 touch LCD lacks GPIO and mounting points, the RP2040 LCD is pretty cool, but not having touch support is a bummer. Finally I thought that maybe it's better to go with a separate controller like a pico, and an 1.28" Round Touch LCD. It has touch support (duh) and 4 mounting screw posts. Pretty good. My only issue is the 13 pin JST connector used to hook it up to an MCU. It's gonna be a PCB design, no hand wiring, so I don't want a mess of cables dangling around. If only I was able to hook up a goldpin connector, or something, it would come together pretty clean. I was toying around with an idea of designing an adapter board, but there's not much room to play with and the pins are pretty tightly spaced (1.25mm). Also, it would be really great to come up with something that can be easily done without special equipment. All I have is a soldering station. No hot air, no nothing. I'd love to be able to design something that anyone can make at their desk.

I'd be grateful for any clever ideas. Thanks in advance! Cheers!

More pics: https://imgur.com/a/iYK45eQ

I've been lurking r/emk for a while and never shared anything useful, but since Lemmy community is getting traction, I thought it's a good opportunity to brag a little.

I just got the first prototype of my custom ergo board working a few days ago. It still has no plate, no name, no case and a few things I'd like to tweak eventually, but I'm very happy about my first PCB design and first time I used KiCAD not turning into a piece of junk immediately.

I've been looking at a lot of thumb cluster designs and asking some people using all the kyrias, hillsides, irises and such how usable/comfortable the upper keys are and decided to try out something like Pinky4/RockOn/pinkies out in hope of having a comfortable 4 key thumb cluster on a flat keyboard. I'm still getting used to it and slowly developing muscle memory, but I think it's a moderate success. I use the upper keys as layer toggle and it's not bad if a little unfamiliar. I've also considered going splayed for a moment, but decided to go with 1.5u pinky column, so I can place my pinky anywhere I like and it's an absolute joy. I love the look and feel. Sourcing keycaps is definitely a little awkward, but I only use blank DSA anyway. Having some troubles with setting up my first handwired split I never got around to finish, then my Let's Split PCB from falbatech, which I never got to finish (see the pattern?) I decided to go with single MCU design and was unsure about the connector until I saw cheapino by tompi and I knew that was it. Very sturdy and solid connection. However the standard cat5 cable is a little too stiff for my liking and I'm gonna look for something more flexible. I'm happy to see my first PCB design work, however, it's not without its flaws. I copied the design from cheapino, but didn't notice that some pins on the RJ45 are messed up and I had to make a custom cable, or one row pin would be permanently shorted to ground. Another issue is that I forgot to measure the footprint for RP2040Zero I got from SadekBaroudi (thank you for awesome repository and your boards being a huge inspiration) so it can't be mounted from underneath the PCB as I originally planned. This will make designing the plate a little more difficult.

That being said, I'm really happy with what I achieved. The board is comfy, PCBs from JLCPCB are great quality and programming RP2040 is much less tedious and forgiving than pro micro, with the added benefit of a USB socket that doesn't break away the minute you look at it with too much force. It has support for both hot-swap and soldered low profile Gateron KS-27 switches, that are cheap and pretty cool in my opinion and the spacing is a little tighter at 18.5mm making the board pretty portable. (Aside from the switches falling out of the sockets due to lack of the plate I still haven't got enough time to cut out) I also broke my fear of PCB design and the whole "I'm too dumb for this."

I'm nowhere near finished with this one, however I don't know how long it will take me to make the plate, case and another revision of PCB, since I already started using it as a daily driver and I love it. Once I finish everything I planned, I will open source the PCB, CAD and QMK files. Hope you enjoy it.

Cheers, Arth.

PS: I'm so glad we've moved into a decentralised network, no matter how good or bad Lemmy is. I only joined today, but for most of the problems with today's internet, FOSS is the answer. Great move!