Looking good!kile wrote:Look what Santa just brought!
I made "only" one mistake on the PCB design - I reversed the LED USB plug. It should actually be soldered to the top of the PCB to work properly, but I wanted it on the bottom. No biggie, since I only use the LEDs for laughs anyway. I soldered a JST connector to power the LEDs from an external battery just to see what it looks like with all the LEDs on. I am not putting the MCU into sleep mode at all yet, so it draws a lot of power. Which is why I didn't solder the CR2032 battery connector yet. I am powering the circuit from the programmer connector and reading the matrix in an infinite loop, just like you would on a wired keyboard. I'll work on this during the weekend.
Congratulations on your progress. I'd love to give your version a try.kile wrote:If anyone likes adventure, I can send PCBs and help people with the assembly and programming. You will need a dedicated MCU programmer, though, because these chips do not have bootloaders which is probably their biggest drawback.
I'll offer these later on ebay for $20 at least. And the same programmer is used for the dongle as well, because that one needs programming too.Sure, no problem, but that way you will not be able to change layouts or upload bugfixes. Of course, I can burn a fixed layout, send it, and hope for the best.Muirium wrote:I'd be hella interested in one of these guys come the time your software can be preloaded. The Teensy loader app is just about as close to silicon as I comprehend!
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nrfburn -f 16 -w myKbd.hexMy almost 8 year old daughter soldered the LED current limiting resistors. And she did it quite well, too. If she can do it, you should be able to do it too.scottc wrote:I am quite partial to adventure, but don't have a dedicated programmer or a very steady solder-hand and it seems like quite a scary thing to do.
You can get keycaps from SP from here: http://keycapsdirect.com
Why do you need a rework station? Unless you need a good excuse to buy yourself some tools (I'm all for that), a temperature controlled soldering iron will do just fine. Have you tried to solder TQFN44 or 0805 SMD? It's really easy. Even 0603 is doable but a little frustrating. I did TQFP100 (ATmega2560) which has a 0.5mm pitch and it wasn't as hard as it looks. It looks really scary until you actually try it. Now, desoldering is, of course, a whole different story - you need a hot air station for that.PJE wrote:I'm just about to pull the trigger on a SMD rework station to help build my future keyboards. I may even pause V2 and add the option to go bare metal... The Pro Micro is a bit of a mess when it comes to wide I/O ports - you have lots of single pin ports.
Well, the battery was around 8V, the resistors are 1K each, the drop of the LED is around 3.1V, so that means about 5mA/LED.PJE wrote:What is the power draw for all those LEDs?
I love your project and I’m very interested in building something similar. It’s awesome to see you selling programmers at that price soon.kile wrote:I didn't mention this, but I will sell a few of the programmers for these chips. They will be about $15 assembled, cleaned and programmed (yeah, the programmer needs programming too). And that's a special DT community price.
As with anything, projects are the easiest way to justify buying tools you don't really need...kile wrote:Why do you need a rework station? Unless you need a good excuse to buy yourself some tools (I'm all for that), a temperature controlled soldering iron will do just fine. Have you tried to solder TQFN44 or 0805 SMD? It's really easy. Even 0603 is doable but a little frustrating. I did TQFP100 (ATmega2560) which has a 0.5mm pitch and it wasn't as hard as it looks. It looks really scary until you actually try it. Now, desoldering is, of course, a whole different story - you need a hot air station for that.PJE wrote:I'm just about to pull the trigger on a SMD rework station to help build my future keyboards. I may even pause V2 and add the option to go bare metal... The Pro Micro is a bit of a mess when it comes to wide I/O ports - you have lots of single pin ports.
And I'm really all for bare metal. I love designing these simple digital circuits and soldering, for me that's probably the most fun part of this hobby.
Ok, the starter kit (prices in EUR):Muirium wrote:Wonder how much a "starter pack" would cost of all the appropriate bits (besides caps, stabs, LEDs and switches) as bundling saves on international postage…
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nRFBurn programmer (special DT community price) 11.00
OneHand Wireless PCB 3.00
LED powering USB connector 1.00
transistor, capacitors, CR2032 holder, 0.05" pin headers, diodes 2.00
controller programming cable with reverse-proof connector 2.00
small USB dongle programming cable-from-hell (optional - see below) 15.00
nRF24LE1 controller (only if you want me to solder it too) 5.00
soldering: the controller, transistor, capacitors,
one switch (SW1:3) with the LED socket, battery holder,
programming connector, USB LED connector and diodes.
You need to solder the switches, LEDs and current limiting resistor 10.00
fully assembled and tested unit TBAI completely understand thatPJE wrote:As with anything, projects are the easiest way to justify buying tools you don't really need...
Some of the surface mount crystals and smaller CPU packages are difficult to hand solder. Also, my old temperature controlled iron bit the dust so I'm looking at the $65 dual hot air and iron combo units.
I bought an oscilloscope two months ago for a project I've since abandoned 
But, damn, these things are niiice For three years I've been looking at my circuits through a logic analyzer, and now a whole new world opened in front of me 
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OneHand wireless
firmware build Apr 15 2014 19:23:50
battery voltage: 2.76V
RF packet stats (total/retransmit/lost): 213/39/0
keyboard's been on for 34 minutes 44 secondsI'm normally pretty good at hand soldering SMD as long as I choose the larger packages.Muirium wrote:We're going surface mount with these PCBs as they advance. That has significant upsides like you mentioned, and Kile's making great use of this potential, too. The only problem is that surface mount soldering is not for the faint hearted. We're moving into pre-assembled kit territory. Which is fine, if you're up for it!
Do you use the OneHand for typing code at work? If you do, how long did it take you to get used to it?PJE wrote:Now back to porting a 25,000 line industrial application over to a new graphics platform!
I use a 60% keyboard at work, but have been using a laptop at home.kile wrote:Do you use the OneHand for typing code at work? If you do, how long did it take you to get used to it?PJE wrote:Now back to porting a 25,000 line industrial application over to a new graphics platform!
I'm thinking about making a smaller board (TKL or less) with a custom layout and try to actually do my work on it. The problem is that I'm a creature of habit and I fear that the transition from a full sized layout is going to be long and painful and maybe not worth it.
Yeah, I know. A wireless keyboard with wires sticking out of itMuirium wrote:Rather smart. But you're going to want to so something about those loose wires, Mr. 2.4 GHz!
Well, thank you from my part. But as I said before, this is really not as complicated or hard as it may look. And I am more than happy to share any and all knowledge I might have on these things. All that's required is an honest will to learn. Coming up with projects that allow me to learn about electronics is my main motivation for doing this. I don't really need this keyboard that much, you knowmatt3o wrote:I just wanted to chime in to say that I'm enviously following this thread and you gave me some very interesting ideas for my future builds.
That's better!kile wrote:Happy now?
Wireless transmission's been working good for a while. I don't do frequency hopping or anything fancy like that. I just set it to a channel away from the WiFi range, and it seems to work just fine.PJE wrote:How's the wireless data transmission working out? Any data on battery life yet?