Be nice, work hard. Build tools, tell stories. Start five year fights. Kein Ort für Nazis.
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I follow a lot of tags, but lately I feel like I haven't seen very many posts out there for the kinds of things I'm interested in. Cohost is a nice place, but I feel like I haven't found my "scene" at all (or maybe it just doesn't live here, sadly).
If y'all have any cool folks or tags to follow, feel free to share them with me. I'd love to have more of this stuff on my feed.
So, I ordered some boards from JLCPCB (in China), they departed Hong Kong (very normal), then arrived in Cincinnati Ohio, USA, which is odd, as they are supposed to be headed to Berlin, Germany.
Uhhh, whatcha doin international logistics?
Edit: a few hours later it is in Germany, all is right in the world.
Decided to throw together a little keyboard board to test out some switches, and maybe make a thumb keyboard for my little Forth system.
I threw a relatively huge 48-pin MCU (stm32g030c8t6) on it so I can read every switch, which was hilariously cheaper (€0.85/ea @ qty 5) than a port expander IC and/or a smaller MCU with diodes for row/column scanning. Switches are K2-1817UQ-C4SW-01 (pdf datasheet). SWD pins for programming, an SPI port for I/O, and 5v0/3v3 power are brought out to the 2x6 header so I can make a little IDC cable for it.
I plan to implement a little T9-esque keypad, which I think can fit in 4x4 keys, but I threw in two extra columns just in case I can't. The whole board is 64x64mm, so it should fit pretty comfortably in one hand. If you have some LEGO sitting around, the whole board is the same size as an 8x8 lego plate, and the buttons have the same size and spacing as the pips of a lego brick.
I thought about making a larger or more complete board, but the deadline for CNY is like... today, so done is better than perfect.
I wish there was a more common "nice switch" between the cheap/simple/very clicky "SPST momentary switches", you know, those ones with the round stems and square bodies; and "mechanical switches", like cherry or kailh (including the lower profile "choc" switches).
I generally want:
My benchmark here are "game boy A/B buttons" or "TI-84 buttons", which are both conductive membranes with hard plastic toppers. This could be an option, but you usually have to stick to existing elastomeric designs (e.g. using replacement GB buttons), or buy a LOT of them.
I'd rather have something standard/semistandard, so I could choose an arbitrary grid/strip of keys to make square/rectangle keys, and some choice of "caps", or at least something that could be colored/screen printed/lasered for small batch stuff.
I did have someone show me a hirose switch which I think is maybe in this direction? But I haven't played around with them, so I don't know if they match the "feel" i'm going for, and they don't have caps.