My custom unique looking "Rapture" keyboard build log

[dj027x]

Do those LEDs cause any interference with the switch actuation? And ugh, I need to learn more about this PCB etching process you and vvp keep talking about.

Iv'e been keeping an eye on this. As you may or may not be able to tell from the following pics, there is actually a relatively large amount of space between the led and keycap when bottomed out (1 to 2 mm).

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 And fear not; I will document the pcb fabrication well =D
However, the good news is that they fit! And I didn't even have to modify the switch case any further than cutting that top bit as I explained before.
Bending the leads of the led to line up with the holes gives for good separation distance between the leads.
From here, its looking like I can make the keyboard matrix on the upper side of the pcb, and the led circuitry on the flipside.
Updated of a lighting test soon to come (gotta write some arduino code)

[DrHubblePhD]

Do those LEDs cause any interference with the switch actuation? And ugh, I need to learn more about this PCB etching process you and vvp keep talking about.

Iv'e been keeping an eye on this. As you may or may not be able to tell from the following pics, there is actually a relatively large amount of space between the led and keycap when bottomed out (1 to 2 mm).

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(Attachment Link)
(Attachment Link)
(Attachment Link)

 And fear not; I will document the pcb fabrication well =D
However, the good news is that they fit! And I didn't even have to modify the switch case any further than cutting that top bit as I explained before.
Bending the leads of the led to line up with the holes gives for good separation distance between the leads.
From here, its looking like I can make the keyboard matrix on the upper side of the pcb, and the led circuitry on the flipside.
Updated of a lighting test soon to come (gotta write some arduino code)

That looks sick, interested if you can get everything fitting well!

[dj027x]

Hear Ye;
A video documenting my test-switch has been posted on youtube. My good phone is broken, so you get ****ty quality
(I realize I'm also not the most interesting person to listen to haha)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAS6XXlzCHo&feature=youtu.be

[dj027x]

One aspect that I dislike about pwm leds is that you tend to see the colors bleed when you move your eyes quickly. This is a little stressful for the eyes, but seeing as it would be impractical to use a dac for every component for every lead, let's hope I can get the pwm frequency high enough to fix this issue. One problem is that each of the three components of color in a single led must be activated in syncopation. That is; even during pwm, only one component can be lit at once. If two components are activated at once, current simply flows through whichever component has the slightly smaller drop-out voltage, and you only see one color.

[dj027x]

Diodes are in. I'm doing some research on suitable led matrix drivers. Ive found one that drives 16 leds. I should be able to use 9 of them to drive all channels of all of my leds

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[dj027x]

So I have purchased the HT1632c led driver. It should be capable of handling all 144 signals on the board, controlled by a serial interface. so the teensy will scan for keypresses, send appropriate signals to pc, determine color of leds, and send a bitstream to the led driver to take care of it.

[dj027x]

Sorry for the delay. This driver is taking forever to ship from china once it's here, progress will pick up again.

[dj027x]

The little buggers are *finally* here!

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Im going to just do a little testing to be sure the chip can light leds with sufficient brightness at a high frequency, then its on to pcb design!

[dj027x]

School and work have been retarding my progress, however it will pickup soon. I have bought some sets of gateron switches in the group buy. Id like to see how light shines through them, and if it looks pretty slick, I may rebuild this board with smd rgb leds instead. But I'm going to progress with the leds and switches I currently have for now

[Evo_Spec]

Not really sure what to say but i just wanted to leave a message here letting you know that i am keeping up with your updates!

look forward to seeing the progress.

[dj027x]

Not really sure what to say but i just wanted to leave a message here letting you know that i am keeping up with your updates!

look forward to seeing the progress.

Thanks! It's encouraging knowing others are interested in this

[stoic-lemon]

Yup, interesting project. Good luck with it and keep the updates coming.

[CPTBadAss]

Glad you're making some progress. Now let me see those etchings!

[dj027x]

Glad you're making some progress. Now let me see those etchings!

I'll post pics documenting the entire process as soon as I begin it. Although the amount of school work I have has been keeping me from making much progress on this.

[dj027x]

Just thought I'd let everybody know i haven't abandoned this project; I've been drowning in college work, but I should have some free time this weekend or next to make some solid progress

[berserkfan]

very happy to see more matrix layout fans.

sooner or later some one will decide to do a split layout with a matrix size I like... and then I'll pounce and probably make my last ever wallethack purchase!

[dj027x]

Now that school is out, I've been making slow but steady progress. I still hold a full-time job, so I have about 3 hours a day to work on this.
It turns out that the Holtek led drivers I got do not support RGB LEDs. RGB LEDs are fussy, in that you can only drive one color component at a time, otherwise if two or more colors are being driven simultaneously, all the current will flow through one path, you only see one color, and that used path is overpowered and more likely to burn out. To avoid this, one must syncopate the activation of each color component for each led. The teensy has 30 GPIO pins, which is _just_ enough to pull off using the teensy to drive the LEDs and monitor keystrokes with minimal external circuitry (i will need a simple 3 to 8 demux for monitoring keystrokes). Originally, I had hoped to offload the work of driving the LEDs to a dedicated chip, however I could not find one reasonably priced, or individually sold that suited this project, so I will have to either use a CPLD or FPGA to design my own, or let the teensy handle it. Due to the relatively beefy processor, I am pretty confident that this shouldn't be an issue, but only stress testing will tell. Right now, I am writing an extremely basic keyboard firmware for the teensy to use for testing to make sure the hardware and theory all works before I assemble the hardware and flesh out a killer firmware. While I had wanted to make this nkro, I have not been able to find good documentation on how to do this. It seems to be a limitation of USB. I have read that nkro can be done, but I have yet to see anybody explain how its done on an arduino or teensy. This week, I completed the extremely tedious task of setting up the LED matrix for further testing. I am going to hand write (or script) some test images and see how much the teensy can process in the background while still providing a steady image and smooth animation to the LED matrix. Here's a quick shot of the current setup. Not all the LEDs are hooked up to the teensy yet, but you get the idea.

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[dj027x]

The full matrix in all of its colorful glory

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[dj027x]

A video of a simple animation is up at https://youtu.be/y0u0rfIS4LY
I was unable to find a dedicated led driver that suits this project for a reasonable price, so I'm testing wether the teensy can handle driving the leds by itself. So long as you aren't running physics simulations on this board, it should be able to animate the leds quite nicely; even run simple games like tetris or conway's game of life, albeit on a 12x4 screen. Based on current performance, the teensy should be able to render pretty animations and monitor and process keystrokes simultaneously with no issues. I also had the idea of having it record every keystroke you make, so it can display essentially a heat-map of keys most often pressed, as a tool to help you design a custom layout. My hopes were to allow one use the board to program itself through an assembly code of sorts. The led's colour or flashing would represent a particular instruction or value in memory. One would then be able to tap the key, or use function keys to alter the values, thus altering the behaviour of the keyboard. Whether this would be most easily done by creating a functional language within the teensy, or writing my own microcontroller to an FPGA is yet to be determined.

[shaymdev]

My hopes were to allow one use the board to program itself through an assembly code of sorts. The led's colour or flashing would represent a particular instruction or value in memory. One would then be able to tap the key, or use function keys to alter the values, thus altering the behaviour of the keyboard. Whether this would be most easily done by creating a functional language within the teensy, or writing my own microcontroller to an FPGA is yet to be determined.

  you are hard core!

I'm not usually into LED lighting the keyboards...but this project is looking pretty awesome...and might be making me wish for something like this in my build.

[Evo_Spec]

awwwww yeahhhh, rainbow!!!!

[dj027x]

I believe the slight blinking that can be seen when running the rainbow effect can be easily mitigated by using small approximate look-up tables for trig functions instead of calculating values on the fly. Now, I just need a multiplexer to monitor the keystrokes. I am going to _finally_ begin designing the pcb, and keep you updated along the way. I have decided to keep it 6kro for now to allow the keyboard to work with bios. I will likely add a switching feature to this in the future to allow the user to change from 6kro to nkro. Some amount of hackery is needed to actually get the teensy to nkro, but im up for it, when the time comes.

[dj027x]

2 anouncements:
A: F*** script kiddies
B: Lots of progress has been been made! Updates soon to come

[Mad_Maxx]

Awesome project!
It's great to see people forging into the great unknown, with nigh but a workshop and an idea.
Where did you get the idea for putting the quote on the caps like that? It's freakin sick.

Good luck!

[dj027x]

Where did you get the idea for putting the quote on the caps like that?

I'm all for simplicity, but the completely blank keycaps were just too boring. I figured some barely visible text would just give it a nice accent, without being too flashy.
As for my choice of quote, I just love the character of Andrew Ryan; His vision, his philosophies. The quote (at least my interpretation) is a reminder not to be a metaphorical slave; If you want something, you gotta go out there and get it. Its also a little allusion to how free this keyboard is going to allow you to be, as far as keyboards go of course. A contending quote was "No Gods or Kings. Only Man" I actually may end up going with that one in the end

[dj027x]

So, here's the skinny:
I've decided to go with gateron blues. I used a dremel tool to remove the plastic bit, which you can see in the video.
There was that ~10Hz flicker I mentioned in the last video; I fixed that entirely by setting the teensy to 96 MHz overclocked.
After playing around with some code, I've gotten it to run some mildly interesting animations, which you'll see in the video. The moving rainbow, a breathing effect, pong, conway's game of life, and 'ghosting', but not the bad kind, the key you press just lights up and fades away.
I actually reeeeaaally want to program tetris into it next.
Anyway, materials have been ordered: 12x12 double sided copper clad FR4 board, a 3 to 8 decoder http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?vendor=0&keywords=568-1417-1-ND, and an A105054-ND http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/5-146130-6/A105054-ND/1125654 header to solder to the underside of the teensy so we can access those much needed GPIOs.
I've decided to just use Express PCB to create the schematic instead of going through the hassle of learning kicad, and have I got a treat for you;
current mockup:

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single block:

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And for those playing along at home, just let me know if you want the actual express pcb file, and i can email it to you.
Now for some game changing developments, I have actually looked into, and subsequently been getting really excited about getting a 3d milling machine. In particular, the xcarve https://www.inventables.com/technologies/x-carve, a desktop sized 3 axis milling machine with up to 75 micrometer accuracy. With this, I can mill my case out of plastic, cut out the circuit board and drill the holes in one go (2 for double sided circuits) instead of etching it with chemicals, and even shave just a hair-thin layer off of the keycaps to engrave the lettering! The head could also be swapped out to create a lathe, 3d printer, laser cutter, pick and place machine, and drill press! Given the parts I have laying around, I could build it for $600. That's pretty damn good in my opinion. Plus, I may decide to create my own switched in the future, which I could use this machine to create =D
So, I'm currently in the process of finishing up the design and then I'ts just a matter of creating the board, assembly, and programming the teensy.
Please let me know if theres anything else you want me to cover!

note: link to video coming soon

[dj027x]

link to video:

[No_joke]

Really nice work!
I'm liking the progress on this
What are decoders used for?
CNC routers are amazing. I've been wanting to build one for some time now.
If you can justify the expense I think you'd definitely have many uses for it.
Now, building your own switches... Interesting! Has it been done before?
Wouldn't injection moulding be a better technique for that?

[dj027x]

Really nice work!
I'm liking the progress on this
What are decoders used for?
CNC routers are amazing. I've been wanting to build one for some time now.
If you can justify the expense I think you'd definitely have many uses for it.
Now, building your own switches... Interesting! Has it been done before?
Wouldn't injection moulding be a better technique for that?

Thanks! the decoder is used because the teensy does not have enough GPIOs to control the LEDs and monitor keystrokes simultaneously, at least, not the way I've wired it up. The teensy will use 3 outputs to select 1 of 8 sets of 6 keys, with the aid of the decoder. It will then check its 6 inputs, and depending on which set of 6 keys it is powering, it can figure out which keys are being pressed. Not sure if switches have been built on this scale before. Yea, I would probably use the mill to create the mold out of aluminum which would be much cheaper than having a third party create it.

[dj027x]

I'v been continuing to develop the PCB layout, so here's a quick update:

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I've worked out a place to fit the decoder on the main board. I want the board to have as thin of a bezel as the poker ii. This means that I cannot attach the teensy on any side of the board outside the switch  matrix, otherwise I'd have to make the bezel bigger to accommodate it.  This means that I will either have to fit the teensy onto the main board, or a second board below the main one, which will make the keyboard thicker. Ideally, I would like to keep this board thinner than the poker ii as well, but the poker ii has space beneath the space bar to house big components. I think I will try to mount the teensy on a second board near the top of the switch matrix, so that I can play off any extra thickness as a means to tilt the board. however, if I am able to fit the teensy on the main board, I could achieve a thickness of approx. 2.5 cm with keycaps on; 33% thinner than the poker ii!

[dj027x]

Just made a small fix to the wiring. I didn't like running the active high enable line between the led contacts, so I moved some stuff around and brought the line around the switch components.

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I am finding that circuit design is pretty cool on this scale. It's like a big organic puzzle, where you determine the problems, and how to fix them. Engineering is great!
Luckily, this should all work in the lower MHz range, so I shouldn't have to worry about length matching, crosstalk, joint angles etc.

[Ramage]

link to video:

That's definitely borderlands 2 in the background.

[neverused]

Quick question, in your pcb layout are you going to use diodes and leds in the switch? I know that the switch allows for diodes to be placed in the housing, but that would likely conflict with any Ieds. I didn't see a separate solder pad or location for either component.

[dj027x]

Quick question, in your pcb layout are you going to use diodes and leds in the switch? I know that the switch allows for diodes to be placed in the housing, but that would likely conflict with any Ieds. I didn't see a separate solder pad or location for either component.

I'm actually putting the LED where the diode usually goes, and have moved the led to the left of its corresponding switch. It's hard to tell what goes where without the silkscreen layer, plus I didn't actually label the led pins, because they're inside the switch. But here's a quick sketch:

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[neverused]

Quick question, in your pcb layout are you going to use diodes and leds in the switch? I know that the switch allows for diodes to be placed in the housing, but that would likely conflict with any Ieds. I didn't see a separate solder pad or location for either component.

I'm actually putting the LED where the diode usually goes, and have moved the led to the left of its corresponding switch. It's hard to tell what goes where without the silkscreen layer, plus I didn't actually label the led pins, because they're inside the switch. But here's a quick sketch:

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(Attachment Link)

Oh very nice

[dj027x]

Damn this thing is getting compact! It's still very messy, however I have fit everything within the bounds of the physical switches! There are probably still some inefficiencies somewhere that I have not yet caught, but it's coming along. I also noticed there were some broken connections in my last update; oops. Those have been fixed now:

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[dj027x]

well, my current design is really compact, however because of the key layout that I want, there is no room to fit the teensy on a single board. I am going to redesign the circuit on 2 boards, which will then be sandwiched closely together and connected with a ribbon cable. This will allow for a thin bezel, and the thickness of the board should still end up being roughly as thick as the poker ii. I've bought a 40-pin zif clamshell connector, some short 40 pin flex-cable, solder paste, solder mask, and micro usb female type b ports. The solder mask and paste should make assembling this thing a cinch, and I may put several usb ports around the edges, so one can connect the board wherever they please, however its still up in the air. At 70 cents for 10 ports, I figured buy it now, make decisions later. Updated circuit design pics likely to come tomorrow.

[joey]

Why not connect directly to the teensy with a ribbon cable, rather than a second pcb that has a teensy on it?

[dj027x]

Why not connect directly to the teensy with a ribbon cable, rather than a second pcb that has a teensy on it?

I would need to build a breakout board to attach the cable to the teensy anyway. I guess I could solder the ribbon cable wires directly to the teensy leads, but I think that would get pretty messy. You can see how crowded my design currently is in the pictures above, however if I just move that 3 to 8 decoder onto another board with the teensy, the design becomes much less cluttered, and less prone to errors both in designing and etching.

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[Dodgy]

Man, this is looking freaking awesome 

[dj027x]

Thanks! I know things are moving slowly, but I only get about 3-4 hours a day to myself. I can however guarantee everybody that this board will be done in under 6 months. I'm rapidly approaching fabrication time!

Dude, I love the work you're doing with the keycaps! At the start of this project, I was looking for keycaps like yours: https://geekhack.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=54513.0;attach=95645;image but black instead of blue. Do you think you could make keycaps with black opaque sides and a transparent diffuse top? I would love to put those on this board! Taking it a step further, would putting a legend in the transparent area be feasible?

[dj027x]

8mm ribbon cables came in. Just waiting on cable sockets and other building materials to get started. I'm ordering the xcarve mill, or some variant shortly, so I may forgo etching the board in favor of milling it instead.

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[neverused]

Any progress on this?

[dj027x]

Any progress on this?

Still working out the 2-board design. I have ordered all the parts for the milling machine, so once those arrive, I just need to mill the boards! I'm also waiting on the arrival of the planck keyboard grid top plate to get here. Just a waiting game at this point. I'll be sure to post pics of the new 2-board design when I get something good worked out. Probably sometime this week

[njbair]

I stumbled upon this thread a while back but forgot about it because it wasn't coming up under the Watched tab. Definitely want to keep an eye on this, and looking forward to seeing your new design.

[dj027x]

I stumbled upon this thread a while back but forgot about it because it wasn't coming up under the Watched tab. Definitely want to keep an eye on this, and looking forward to seeing your new design.

Thanks! I'm glad to hear people are interested in the results!

[dj027x]

Just a little update; the 3d milling machine should be here, and assembled in 3 weeks at most. Soon as that's done, I will mill out the main boards! There is actually one circuit board I need to make for the milling machine, which I will use the toner transfer method to etch.

[vvp]

I will mill out the main boards!

That sounds interesting. Post pictures when you are done.

[spfft]

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the mill + getting it up & running. Very exciting build log

[dj027x]

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the mill + getting it up & running. Very exciting build log

I'd be happy to! I will probably put that info up somewhere else and link it in here in an attempt to keep this thread keyboard related.