I need.
My god Acidfire, I want to take you out for dinner and beers. I would kill for that. Lemme get in on the beta test PRRREEEEAAAASSSEEEE
I actually love your 70% board! I was actually thinking about working on one like this to take when I need to travel. Great work!
Need. 70%.
Need. ErgoGP.
NO.Money.
Oh my good, I'm drooling at the pics.
Gosh ...
I want this one!
Congrats man, awesome work!
Glad you guys like it
I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical about the layout, but it actually feels very familiar when I put my hands on it, as opposed to the Full set up. I think it could make a great in between board, allowing you to adjust to the matrix layout without having to relearn your posture at the same time. Then, when you're up to speed, you can make the move to the split boards with much less frustration (I would hope.) I'll be pricing it out after I've finished the mid board PCB, but I expect it to come in 20-40 less than the split kit.
The RGB LED panels/90% acrilic looks awesome! Can't wait to do some fun stuff with those LEDs.
I like those keycaps. I hope they diffuse better than the clear ones I tested with. I'm wondering if SP can make it so less light passes through or something else to help diffuse the light more.
Me too! I'm also looking forward to seeing what other people can pull off with them. Being a 12-bit PWM, it should make for some very smooth color transitions as well.
Also (forgive me if it's been brought up before), but have you seen hasu's TMK firmware? It's really, really easy to read and modify, and could possibly be a great base for your Ergo* firmwares
Yup, hasu & ben's firmwares have both been sent my way. While I may end up borrowing some parts (with appropriate attribution of course), particularly the USB management, the way my board functions is a bit different than either set up, and will end up being a custom firmware.
On the note of firmware, I had a bit of inspiration on the way into work this morning. Because of the I/O expander I'm using, you can attach up to 8 devices to the main controller. I realized however, that the biggest boards that will be attached would be the main boards, which currently have 4 I/O on the expander free. What that can give me is a 4bit address, and allowing up to
16 different board types to be automatically recognized. This means that you could have up to 8 of the same board design attached without any custom rewrite of the firmware to match your layout. You plug everything in, and the device figures out automatically how to talk to them.
Now, on the main board, obviously this means that you can only have the board type address, meaning there's little you can do to vary it. However, boards like the thumb clusters have additional I/O free, meaning that not only can the controller recognize that it's a thumb board, but also what layout that thumbboard has
So while 16 individual devices may not seem like a lot, the ability to do sub addresses greatly expands the variety I can offer while very little work on the firmware size.
Right now, this is what I have mapped out.
0000 - Left main keypad - No variation in layout, but up to 3 additional keys can be added to matrix
1000 - Right main keypad - No variation in layout, but up to 3 additional keys can be added to matrix
0001 - Left thumb keypad - Additional I/O can provide up to 32-64 variations (5 or 6bit addresses)
1001 - Right thumb keypad - Additional I/O can provide up to 32-64 variations (5 or 6bit addresses)
0010 - 4x5 keypad - Additional I/O can provide up to 32-64 variations (5 or 6bit addresses)
0011 - 70% middle cluster keypad - Additional I/O can provide up to 32-64 variations (5 or 6bit addresses)
There will of course, be some limitation do to the memory constraints of the 32u4, but I believe the upgradable CPU will let me expand into something ARM based and further improve on the capabilities & capacity.