Help me programming a Teensy 2.0 for a 104 key board!

[RollinLower]

Hi good people of this forum!

I'm a keyboard enthusiast who has just started building boards for other people too. All boards i have ever build before have always included some kind of PCB tough (mostly 60% boards).
right now i'm building a 104-key board for someone, and i've decided to use a Teensy 2.0 for this as 104 key PCB's arn't really available for cheap.

I kinda have trouble programming the teensy for this tough. I've never done thif beofre, and i really would love any help you guys could give!
basically, a full noob-proof step by step would be amazing if any of you could give this!

Thanks for any replies!

[suicidal_orange]

The Teensy 2.0 only has 25 pins so to make a 104 key matrix you would need to use a 10x11 layout which means the firmware would be confusing and the physical wiring wouldn't look anything close to the neat and tidy handwired boards you have probably seen.  If you were to use a 2.0++ instead it would be much easier as it has enough pins to do a row for each row and lots of columns.  Then you could follow this guide, you'd just have a bigger plate.

Happy building!

[RollinLower]

The Teensy 2.0 only has 25 pins so to make a 104 key matrix you would need to use a 10x11 layout which means the firmware would be confusing and the physical wiring wouldn't look anything close to the neat and tidy handwired boards you have probably seen.  If you were to use a 2.0++ instead it would be much easier as it has enough pins to do a row for each row and lots of columns.  Then you could follow this guide, you'd just have a bigger plate.

Happy building!

thanks! that makes a lot of sense! i'll see if i can find one of those. the link you provided actually has a dead link about figuring out the firmware. do you have any live links on how to do this? i know about the wiring, tough i really need to figure out the firmware!

[suicidal_orange]

What do you need to know?  The firmwares all come with their own documnentation but basically you have to tell it which pins are used for the rows and columns and which key is where (this is deliberately vague as you've not said which firmware you want to use...)

I'm an EasyAVR fan so I would load the 104 key layout from http://keyboard-layout-editor.com into the 'define keyboard' wizzard using the pins I want to use for rows and columns and it will guess the matrix - look at the bottom of the .py file it makes in c:\users\USERNAME\.EasyAVR\boards (it's just text so you can open it in notepad) and you'll see the keys listed in order,  the second set of braces are (row, column) so the easiest way would be to match your wiring to that.

I have never attempted to configure a custom board in TMK/QMK as it's all a bit strange, but people do so if you need help with that say so

[RollinLower]

What do you need to know?  The firmwares all come with their own documnentation but basically you have to tell it which pins are used for the rows and columns and which key is where (this is deliberately vague as you've not said which firmware you want to use...)

I'm an EasyAVR fan so I would load the 104 key layout from http://keyboard-layout-editor.com into the 'define keyboard' wizzard using the pins I want to use for rows and columns and it will guess the matrix - look at the bottom of the .py file it makes in c:\users\USERNAME\.EasyAVR\boards (it's just text so you can open it in notepad) and you'll see the keys listed in order,  the second set of braces are (row, column) so the easiest way would be to match your wiring to that.

I have never attempted to configure a custom board in TMK/QMK as it's all a bit strange, but people do so if you need help with that say so

Once again, this makes so much more sense than any tutorial I found googling this!

I really don't know firmware or coding, so I dunno what I want to use really. I'm a mechanical engineer, very much biased towards the mechanical side. I know forces, calculations and constructions, but software and coding are very much alien to me.

The way you make it seem is awesome tough! Basically I just copy the wiring it makes for me, and then load that piece of firmware onto the teensy?
Thanks for sticking by my noobishness

[BlindAssassin111]

Once again, this makes so much more sense than any tutorial I found googling this!

I really don't know firmware or coding, so I dunno what I want to use really. I'm a mechanical engineer, very much biased towards the mechanical side. I know forces, calculations and constructions, but software and coding are very much alien to me.

The way you make it seem is awesome tough! Basically I just copy the wiring it makes for me, and then load that piece of firmware onto the teensy?
Thanks for sticking by my noobishness

If you want to look into doing QMK, use kbfirmware.com to get a simple understanding and a GUI interface to setup the pinout. It may not be able to do all of the features but it will be much more helpful for you than trying to code it all yourself.

I am also an ME, but I have dabbled in electronics and coding almost my whole life so I am lucky to have a deeper understanding of this black magic.

[suicidal_orange]

Pretty much, just remember that the keys are backwards when you're soldering so Escape which is row 0 column 0 (counting starts at 0) is on the right of the board.

I've just run this through for a full size and it's actually not so great to base the wiring off, I would change the numberpad keys so they are all in one column rather than using the next available.  Most people handwire small board with no gaps so that's what it's designed for...

You can always have a play with the config file before you have the parts.