Computer Peripheral Designs: Keyboards
Planet Keyboard Collection
Earth: Locked into a grid
MX Switch Style Keyboard
Simple Rainbow to Knight Rider animation after no input
Choc Switch Style Keyboard
Small dots for homing keys
All hand routed using KiCad
Saturn: Split like the rings
Voyager
New Horizons
I incorporated a DB25 connector as the interface between the daughterboard microcontroller and the keyboard. You can easily swap between different keyboards and reduce the cost of getting t a new microcontroller for each board. Per PCB, 2 variations can easily be snapped off:
Voyager: a wireless-based keyboard
New Horizons: a wired-based keyboard
Voyager uses a Nice!Nano alternative with zmk for Bluetooth connection. New Horizons utilizes qmk to stand as the most basic controller for reliability.
I used KiCad to draw the schematics and lay out the PCBs. I also made custom MX with Choc style supported footprints for the switches.
Pluto: Oh so far away
Keyboard consisting of 2 10 cm x 10 cm PCBs with extended wires for a long split experience. Cross compatible with the DB-25 system.
Small jump pads to enable cross columns across the split border
Cut off both breakaway boards for the right and solder the jump pads. Keep only the DB25 connector board on the left as the master side.
Designed for the 10 cm x 10 cm constraint for $2 PCBs on JLCPCB
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune coming soon
Hand Wired Encased in Epoxy
Meet Flynn: a hand wired columnar staggered keyboard encased in epoxy
Animation on the OLED screen describing the keyboard status and a lifetime keystroke counter up to 4294967296 (2^32). EEPROM for storage across 1000 memory indicies for distributed writes.