Building Your Own
⌨ Keyboard

Indonesia Mechanical Keyboard Meetup
8 April 2017 - Dattabot Dojo, Senopati, Jakarta

by Priyadi Iman Nurcahyo - priyadi@keyboard.id - keyboard.id

Don't Be Intimidated!
It is not a 🚀 Rocket Science

  • Automatically generated design using tools provided by mechanical keyboard community.
  • Sandwich case. Simple, easy to understand 2D design.
  • Laser cut components. No expensive and complicated molding or machining.
  • No designing by hand required.
  • No programming required.

Required Tools

  • Soldering Iron
  • (optional) Multimeter
  • (optional) Solder sucker
  • Screwdriver
  • Cable cutting & stripping tool

Components: Plate and Case Materials

  • Material for switch plate
    metal plate, 1.5mm thickness, common materials are stainless steel or aluminum alloy
  • Material for case
    most common material is acrylic

Tips: Ask your laser-cutting workshop first, they might be able to provide the material for you.

Components: Controller Board

An Atmel AVR controller board with hardware USB is a safe choice, it is:

  • common
  • well-supported
  • powerful enough for a keyboard
  • practically unbrickable

The most popular controller chip is the ATMega32u4.

Components: Controller Board, cont.

  • Teensy 2.0. Very popular but not that common in Indonesia. Recommended for beginners.
  • Teensy++. Similar to Teensy 2.0 but with more pins for larger keyboards.
  • Pro Micro. Cheap and plentiful in Indonesia.
  • Adafruit Feather Bluefruit LE 32u4. Supports battery and Bluetooth.

Other Components

  • Switches and keycaps *
  • 1N4148 diodes
  • Cables
  • Soldering tin
  • Screws

* Our procedure supports both Cherry MX and ALPS compatible switches.

Step 1: Design Your Own Layout

Head over to 'KLE' (keyboard-layout-editor.com), and start designing!

The "KLE Raw Data"

KLE can output "KLE Raw Data", a partial JSON metadata which is the community standard to describe any keyboard layout.

5K keyboard

→


                                        [{a:7},"A","B","C"],
                                        [{w:2},"","Z"]

Step 2: Get Your CAD Files

  • Copy 'Raw data' of your layout from KLE
  • Paste into Swill's Plate & Case Builder (builder.swillkb.com)
  • You will get SVG, DXF or EPS files.
  • Send the files to your favorite laser-cutting workshop (i.e. LaserIndonesia.com) to get your switch plate and case.

Tips On Laser Cutting

  • Get materials from the laser cutting shop if possible.
  • Pay attention to kerf compensation value. Ask your laser cutting shop the correct value, or use 0.15mm.
  • You can use your favorite vector graphics editor (i.e. Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator) to fine tune your results.

Step 3: Assemble the Hardware

  • Install and solder your switches in matrix arrangement
  • Connect each rows and columns to a pin on the controller
  • In most cases, any pins other than Vcc, GND, and RST are OK
  • Don't forget to take note which row/column connected to which pin

Matrix Arrangement

Example of standard matrix arrangement for the QMK firmware (COL2ROW setting)

Image courtesy of RoastPotatoes.co

Step 4: Generate Your Firmware

  • Copy 'Raw data' of your layout from KLE
  • Go to QMK Firmware Builder (qmk.sized.io) and paste your layout raw data.
  • Define your wiring, pin assignment and your desired keymap
  • Get your .hex file
  • Flash your controller using the resulting .hex file

QMK Firmware

Advanced users can download the source files and make further customizations using the QMK Firmware.

http://qmk.fm

Some features not available from the generator: leader key, mousekeys, Unicode output, audio output, Bluetooth, Trackpoint, and more!

Step 5: There's no Step 5

That wasn't too hard, right? 😅

Showcase: Let's Split

Let's Split

By Raihan Saputra. Dual piece split Planck based keyboard. Uses two Pro Micros, one on each piece, connected to each other by a two wire cable.

Showcase: Promethium

Promethium

By Priyadi. Single piece split Planck based keyboard. Adafruit Feather 32u4 controller. USB & Bluetooth. Trackpoint for mouse control. Per switch RGB LED.

Showcase: Atreus 64

Atreus 64

By Derek Schmell. An Atreus with extra rows and columns. Pro Micro controller. Matias quiet switches. All stainless steel plate and housing.

Showcase: [your keyboard here]

You know what? We could use more keyboards to showcase here 😅

More Keyboard Building Stuff...

The End

PS. Don't forget to document your build process and publish it.