How were you able to diagnose/fix your issue?
Sorry, I didn't see your original reply because I was at work.
So first step was making sure everything was soldered in correctly like the diodes, controller pins, etc. Second step was checking which pins on the switches were not connected. I initially did it the lazy way by trying to bridge the pins (POS to POS, ground to ground) from Switches that I knew worked to ones on the bottom row which did not. Pressing the switches activated different switches on the matrix but in the same column, so I knew it wasn't gonna be something obvious and the easy work was out of the way. Now onto the multimeter and the part that you will probably have to do.
I knew nothing about how a keyboard matrix worked prior to this so I had to look a ton of it up, this site helped:
http://blog.komar.be/how-to-make-a-keyboard-the-matrix/So in order to hone in on the issue I started by checking which side of the PCB traces were faulty. I don't know what your PCB looks like, but mine was a Varmilo VA87MR which had the vertical (positive) traces on one side, and the Horizontal (ground) traces on the other side. The article I linked explained that one pin should be fed power (5v) and the other should pull ground. That is how the switch is activated by closing the loop and sending the signal back to the controller.
I used my multimeter to check the 5V from my USB connection (with the board plugged in) with one prong, and touching the positive pin of the switch with the other. I tested the ground by finding a ground to put one prong on and the other prong on the ground pin of my switch. None of the switches were reading the 5V going through but they were all connected to the ground trace, so I knew that the problem was somewhere on the positive coming in, and because it was the ENTIRE bottom row I knew it had to be on the main switch where the 5V lead in and subsequently ran to the other POS pins.
Here is where I had to rely on some dumb luck. I had to figure out which trace ran the power to that switch, as well as which of those switches it was. Again, I don't know what your PCB looks like, and it might help if you took some pictures of the main column that's not working. The way my PCB was designed it was a complete crapshoot to pinpoint the trace, but I happened to find it by chance.
It was a small trace running to the LEFT arrow key and it was adjacent to like 8 other traces so unless you looked really close it just looked like a giant block that was colored differently than the rest of the board. The trace actually on the opposite side of where my positive traces ran, but it was connected via a tiny throughhole which was thinner than a needle. I used my multimeter to confirm that it was a positive traces, and it showed 5V. I bridged it to the left arrow key actually using my multimeter, grabbed a paperclip, and went to
http://www.keyboardtester.com/ to see if it would read the keys now. I checked the entire bottom row to be sure and everything registered.
Turns out when I pulled the old switches from the Varmilo, I just so happened to pull a tiny bit of the pad on the side of the through-hole that connected the positive pin to the 5V trace.
Basically, figure out which side of your switches isn't working, then figure out where that part of the trace starts. If they are new switches (as in you did not de-solder anything) it could be a cold joint which isn't making a connection. If both pins read fine it may be the connection on the controller, but since it is the entire column that isn't registering that doesn't seem too likely.
There are some videos on how to test the signal back to the controller using your multimeter in diode mode but I'd have to look for them. Let me know if both pins on your switches test fine and I will try to find it for you.
Good luck, and I hope it doesn't take you three weeks to diagnose the issue like it did me - . -
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