[Newbie and DONE] Building an Ortholinear mechanical keyboard

[Le Barde]

OK !! Now this is a success. I am currently writing these lines on my brand new keyboard. I am not acquainted yet with the orthogonal matrix, but it comes fastly. )
I need to perfect it, because for now I have no arrow keys, Windows or Del key (only backspace) . But this is already a good result!

I must say some things:
- I got 2 soldering bugs (e.g. a column with 2 wires and an empty one).
- I had to adapt the LAYOUT as follows and invert the rows from 4 to 0:

Code: Select all

#define LAYOUT( \
    K40, K41, K42, K43, K44, K45, K46, K47, K48, K49, K4A, K64, K65, K66, K67, \
    K30, K31, K32, K33, K34, K35, K36, K37, K38, K39, K3A, K60, K61, K62, K63, \
    K20, K21, K22, K23, K24, K25, K26, K27, K28, K29, K2A, K59, K58, K69, K68, \
    K10, K11, K12, K13, K14, K15, K16, K17, K18, K19, K1A, K54, K55, K56, K57, \
    K00, K01, K02, K03, K04, K05, K06, K07, K08, K09, K0A, K50, K51, K52, K53 \
) { \
    { K00, K01, K02, K03, K04, K05, K06, K07, K08, K09, K0A }, \
    { K10, K11, K12, K13, K14, K15, K16, K17, K18, K19, K1A }, \
    { K20, K21, K22, K23, K24, K25, K26, K27, K28, K29, K2A }, \
    { K30, K31, K32, K33, K34, K35, K36, K37, K38, K39, K3A }, \
    { K40, K41, K42, K43, K44, K45, K46, K47, K48, K49, K4A }, \
    { K50, K51, K52, K53, K54, K55, K56, K57, K58, K59, }, \
    { K60, K61, K62, K63, K64, K65, K66, K67, K68, K69, } \
}

The Pro Micro board was apparently capricious, but I succeeded in the end to upload the hex file... Now I need to make a beautiful case…

[Le Barde]

@Anakey, @Laser and @matt3o, you are my gods…

EDIT : I've edited the title to show that the keyboard is done.
EDIT 2 : You were right @matt3o, I got shorts

[Laser]

Cool! My help was mostly motivational, though

Now, pics or it never happened!

[Le Barde]

Here it is:

[Muirium]

Thought you'd have blanks. A finished ortho needs its own caps, as well as a nice case. Be careful resting it on the hand wired diode matrix now!

What's especially difficult about orthos is, indeed, knowing where everything lies. The right caps can really help. Fortunately, MX is well supported for custom caps and even fairly comprehensive doubleshot sets with single unit mods. My Access-IS board has a 4-unit spacebar and a few 2-unit caps for vital things like Shift and Return, which help find my way around.

[Le Barde]

You're right, I am thinking of a wooden case and plastic sheets to ensure insulation. Also I've got elongated nuts, which I can put on the bottom of the plate to leave space to the wires. Dunno if they are long enough! I'll show here the polished result

[Anakey]

Congratulations on getting it working, glad that i could help. For the first set of keycaps i can throughly recommend purchasing one of these https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PREH-Command ... Swd0BVuGzj i purchased one when i first had my plank, the keycaps are mx mount and already have symbol sub legends on them and there is the equivelent of a full sized board except number row however as it has its own symbol layer then the num row is not really needed. with the space you have on your board you could theroetically put a num pad in which can then double as num row keys on a second layer. Granted the keycaps will be yellowed due to being old ABS but it will help wiith remembering what symbols are on what keys until you are ready later on for one of the community designed sets or whatever you want really.

[ivelegacy]

I accidentally found this post while I was googling.

[netmonk]

Nice to come back few years after and see the end of the project i helped a little bit at the begining.
Cudos to you Le barde and Much respect to all those involved to this success.