This is something I've been working on for a long time, on and off. Finally I sat down long enough to finish something up =) And Santa came a few days early, driving a FedEx truck.
I've been asked numerous times to make a "Phantom 2". I haven't been very keen on doing that. It's already something I've done, and I like to have new ideas, and make new things. I also wanted to incorporate my own symmetric stagger layouts into the next replacement main board. Force the option upon people. Can't you guys see it's superior?!! =D
Anyway, lousy pictures, but here it is!
A main board intended to fit into numerous full size (and TKL) Costar cases (*none tested so far). As opposed to the Costar Matrix, the Sane Matrix has an intuitive 6 rows by 22 columns matrix. That of course requires a custom controller as well, The Voice of Reason.
I built the controller around an ATmega32u2 and three 3-8 decoders. That adds up to 24 (low driving) outputs, and 8 inputs (ATmega internal pull-ups), and 3 LED outputs with PWM. I also routed the UART and ISP interfaces out to a separate header. Then there is an extra PWM output for a forth LED (or just general GPIO). I also added series resistors to the 8 inputs for extra protection, added a fuse for the supply power, and extra protection diodes for the data pins.
All in all, it's sort of like a Frosty Flake on steroids. It should even be possible to use in a Quick Fire Rapid board. (Some of the output pins need to be removed in that case. They are shorted out to ground [for no apparent reason] on the QFR mainboard.) In addition a regular Frosty Flake should be able to control everything but the numpad section of The Sane Matrix.
Nothing has been tested this far, I just wanted to share my Christmas fun. Yeah right, I wish. Apparently I have "more important" things to do...