Latest updates
- Three week vacation starting tomorrow.
- Think I am coming down with a cold.
- Lots and lots of cleaning to do Thursday Friday.
- And baking, and cooking.
- Birthday party on Saturday =D
- Hangover to cure on Sunday(?..)
I hope to throw some soldering in there somewhere to lighten up the cleaning a bit.
For future controller projects I think it would be good to move to the QFN package AT90USB??? chips. They have enough IO-pins to cater for any (I really hope) keyboard matrix. They would require me (or someone) to get some re-flow soldering skills developed. They may be possible to solder by hand, but that is going to be dodgy at the best.
Designing a controller for a board really comes down to
- Getting the dimensions and pin layout correctly copied.
- Placing the components nicely.
- Drawing all the traces.
There isn't much more to it =) The reason I did the Filco tenkeyless is not because I am particularly interested in it myself. I really need a numpad myself.. But the interest for the tenkeyless would be bigger, and there was room to fit the TQFP ATmega32u4 onto there. I would guess there may be many boards that would be interesting to make replacement controllers for. Perhaps some old but common non-USB boards as well.
Today I ordered a macro lens for my camera. Hopefully I will be able to make a video of me soldering a board to give an idea of how hard/easy it is. Never really did film anything before, or did any video editing. So that may get interesting...