Δ E L T A - Atreus inspired column staggered 45% with a 22mm trackball

[havenlau]

Hey everyone 

This is gonna be a build log of my 45% trackball atreus-like board as I go along, I've started planning for this build a while ago but it's only recently when I actually made any progress

Backstory:

So I've had my tex yoda for a year and a half now, beautiful board, perfect to go along with my surface, the cnc case is extremely high quality; but then at the same time it is what started this build - the case was just too heavy to carry around. I wanted something that I could bring to lecture everyday, that could be a companion to the surface, without needing a mouse.



I began searching around for the perfect small form factor layout, eventually I laid my eyes on technomancy's atreus. The layout is very interesting, the size seemed about right, plus I had been desperate to try an 'ergo' staggered layout for a long time.

Features

Trackball
To replace the tex yoda I'd definitely need a mouse of some sort, I thought a trackball would be perfect, so I began looking at various trackballs...





After looking through hundreds of existing trackball mice, 200 aliexpress pages, 300 taobao stores, I've finally found a seller with an MOQ of 2 units, ~$15 each, and that is not a giant 50mm+ ball:



http://www.super-ele.com/Images/UpFile/2010819151240199.pdf

This trackball comes in many variants, 19mm 22mm 36mm 40mm 50.8mm PS2 USB Square Wave Pulses RS232...
I picked up the 22mm + pulse version as it should be the easiest to read, and the documentation seems fairly adequate for what it is.

Switches
I've got a few 65g and 67g zealios laying around, so I'll probably be using those.

Layout
As said above, the layout is very similar to the atreus, except with the mouse buttons. Also, I've added an extra columns on both ends for modifiers, just because I'm unsure if I will adapt to the native atreus layout.



The overall shape was also redesigned a little, accommodating the trackball mounting in the middle.

The middle plate layer is going to be acrylic, while the rest will be plywood, with an ebony finish, similar to:



Backlighting
I have a some leftover ws2812b strips, if I run 50 of them at 15% duty cycle, I would be drawing ~<400mA (white) which is good enough for 900mA that the usb 3.0 the surface is rated, I'm planning on having the leds directly under clear housing of the zealios switches. It should look great with the acrylic layer creating sort of a ring effect between the plywood housing.

Connection and controller
I ordered a few female + male type c breakout boards


which will be connected to a teensy 3.1.

The reason I got the teensy 3.1 instead of the typical atmega32u4 boards is that I've picked up the teensy for a reasonably low price, and that I'm going to continue with an arduino ide based firmware that I've never got around finishing, plus the extra horsepower of the arm chip won't hurt.

I'm planning on adding a usb hub as well, but we will see. On the side note everything will be hand wired for now, not planning to make any pcb to save cost.

Current state

A month ago my local maker space http://www.ylab.ca/ got a laser cutter installed, of course I couldn't wait to try it out  )



Setting up my drawing..



zzzzzzzz lazah zzzzzzzzz



it was surprisingly quick, the whole plate only took a little bit over 4 minutes to complete 

[img width=640 height=480]http://i.imgur.com/iWK8VFM.jpg/img]

Test fitting the switches and trackball... everything fits very nicely , although I would probably need to hot glue the switches since i'm using 1/8" plate instead of 1/16".

To be continued...

[havenlau]

<mine></mine>

[kurplop]

You're off to a good start. This is my kind of board. Does the name DELTA have a specific meaning?

Keep up the progress reports.

[havenlau]

You're off to a good start. This is my kind of board. Does the name DELTA have a specific meaning?

Keep up the progress reports.

Thanks for checking out, and how I got the name was kind of random.. I was doing some calculus the other night and I was thinking about the board's layout, the middle area somehow resembles a triangle / the symbol delta

but then now that I think about it I might wanna change it to not get sued by delta elevator..



)

[S1llyC0ne]

Cool idea ! Design looks great. Keep up the good work ! :thumbs:

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

[Data]

Impressive. 

[Sifo]

thats' ****ng awesome

[tufty]

but then now that I think about it I might wanna change it to not get sued by delta elevator

You could change it because the letter delta is pretty much the equivalent of a "d", and using it to replace an "a" makes no sense.  Alpha, beta, gamma, delta.

"∆elta" would be better.

[CPTBadAss]

Looks cool so far. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out. I should really try my hand at using the laser cutter at the Makerspace near me too...

[funderburker]

A lovely project you've started! Been using a Thinkpad for some time now and I so would want to try out the Tex Yoda. But the price, unavailability and weight has kept me away. Delta looks like the keyboard I would so want as my travel board!

Will definitely keep an eye for updates!

[havenlau]

but then now that I think about it I might wanna change it to not get sued by delta elevator

You could change it because the letter delta is pretty much the equivalent of a "d", and using it to replace an "a" makes no sense.  Alpha, beta, gamma, delta.

"∆elta" would be better.

A∆vice taken

Looks cool so far. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out. I should really try my hand at using the laser cutter at the Makerspace near me too...

Definitely, it is very convenient to cut a few small pieces for test-fitting, and modify your drawing on the spot, last time I went there just happened to be a couple of CAD experts to help me out )

[GEIST]

Sorry for the desecration of this post, but did this ever become a finished keyboard?