Author Topic: [IC] nice!nano: the super thin, wireless Bluetooth replacement for the Pro Micro  (Read 12946 times)

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Offline nicell

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  • Posts: 6


Hi there! The nice!nano is a drop-in replacement for the Pro Micro that offers wireless connectivity via Bluetooth. I've been developing this for the past five months, and it's almost ready for a group buy! Please fill out the IC form to let me know what your preferences for the group buy would be along with other details like firmware.

IC Form: https://forms.gle/xPpzeZ8vbsfPRyRF9

Album: https://imgur.com/a/f5TvyQF

Discord to follow the nice!nano more closely: https://discord.gg/CHd6hUy

The nice!nano is thinner, more powerful, and most importantly has wireless Bluetooth abilities built in. Here's a list of the features:
  • Mid mount USB-C port making the board a 3.2mm total thickness (thinner than a Pro Micro)
  • Extra exposed pins to add a rechargeable lithium battery
  • Works over USB as well
  • nRF52840 chip on board with 1MB of Flash and 256KB of RAM
  • Adafruit Bootloader loaded offering DFU flashing as well as flashing via UF2 storage (similar to dragging a file to a flash drive!)
  • On board lithium battery charger through the USB C port (100mA charge rate)
  • Extremely low power making the board capable of lasting a few weeks on a 100mAh battery
  • Programmable indicator (blue) LED as well as a charging indicator (orange) LED
  • Battery voltage reader to report battery percentage to main device
  • External power can be cut off using an on board MOSFET saving power from LEDs (each can draw 1mA when off!)
  • 5 extra GPIO pins (3 thru holes and 2 pads on the back) offering a total of 23 GPIO pins
  • 3.3V out of the VCC pin to power external features
  • 32.768 kHz oscillator on board for real-time clock capabilities
  • Clean design with matte black solder mask, immersion gold plating, and Tg 170 FR4 for durability

I'm super excited to get these in people's hands! Let me know what you think.

Offline jimboytacos

  • Posts: 235
Yes yes yes YES!

I want one. Maybe 2. Maybe 3. I a sucker for wireless. 

Offline suicidal_orange

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  • Posts: 4771
  • Location: England
I don't have a problem with wires but plenty of people do and this looks like a great solution :thumb:
120/100g linear Zealio R1  
GMK Hyperfuse
'Split everything' perfection  
MX Clear
SA Hack'd by Geeks     
EasyAVR mod

Offline DarkSphere00

  • Posts: 25
  • Location: Italy
This looks great, it could be a perfect replacement for the Elite-C.

One thing is not clear to me though: being outside of the US, I would need to purchase the battery separately am I right?

Offline taintedPurple

  • Posts: 2
Oh man this is awesome!!

Offline vosechu

  • Posts: 90
  • Location: Portland, OR, USA
Super duper in. Not messing around, I’ll probably want 50. Qmk is mandatory for me.

Offline nicell

  • Thread Starter
  • Posts: 6
One thing is not clear to me though: being outside of the US, I would need to purchase the battery separately am I right?

Yes you'll have to find a battery on your own due to shipping restrictions.

Offline myyrddraal

  • Posts: 61
Definitely in. How do you program the nrf chip? BT has flaws for a secure operations it would be good to have fixed BT fw.


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Offline CrazyNun

  • Posts: 96
Sorry if this a noobish question..but will this basically add bt capability to any build?

Offline Bonsa

  • Posts: 75
  • Location: Belgium
I've been wanting to build a wireless board lately... nice! Hopefully this becomes an in-stock item on some sites. Or is it a one time only thing?
Also, are you not sure yet to make it QMK compatable? Because that's definitely a must for me.
« Last Edit: Sat, 30 May 2020, 09:02:39 by Bonsa »

Offline nicell

  • Thread Starter
  • Posts: 6
Sorry if this a noobish question..but will this basically add bt capability to any build?

This is meant more as a replacement for a Pro Micro, but you could manually handwire an existing PCB in theory (doesn't sound like much fun though).

Offline nicell

  • Thread Starter
  • Posts: 6
I've been wanting to build a wireless board lately... nice! Hopefully this becomes an in-stock item on some sites. Or is it a one time only thing?
Also, are you not sure yet to make it QMK compatable? Because that's definitely a must for me.

Hoping to make in an in-stock item after the group buy. Just need the capital :)

It's not QMK upstream compatible because of licensing issues, but there are forks that support it (licensing is questionable). I would recommend the BlueMicro firmware. Made specifically for the nRF52 chips, and I'll be making docs on getting started.

Offline Abhorrent Cell

  • Posts: 73
Most yesly.

Offline nmur

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  • Posts: 1539
  • Location: Sydney
I have almost no use for this as I prefer aluminium boards, but I did want to say that this is pretty badass

Offline Tennstrong

  • Posts: 35
Seems a bit similar to the BLEmicro-pro by Sekigon-Gonnoc at this stage (https://github.com/sekigon-gonnoc/BLE-Micro-Pro), who also has a qmk repo that works with it, newer revision is type-c. That said, fun project, hopefully you can add some features we haven't seen yet.

Offline nicell

  • Thread Starter
  • Posts: 6
Seems a bit similar to the BLEmicro-pro by Sekigon-Gonnoc at this stage (https://github.com/sekigon-gonnoc/BLE-Micro-Pro), who also has a qmk repo that works with it, newer revision is type-c. That said, fun project, hopefully you can add some features we haven't seen yet.

It's quite similar to that board. My board should be compatible with that QMK repo. I haven't seen the USB-C version. Do you have a link? Also I don't believe that board has a LiPo charger on board like mine. Among other nice things like it being extremely thin and exposing extra pins.

Offline godzillq25

  • Posts: 34
  • Location: australia
will this be stocked or rerun coz i dont think ill be able to afford it rn being jobless(yes it my issue), but wondering what will you do after this limited run. maybe get in touch with some venders and they might want to buy of u and could probs reduce ur production costs too.

Offline Top Right Logo

  • Posts: 38

Hoping to make in an in-stock item after the group buy. Just need the capital :)




Offline Tennstrong

  • Posts: 35
Seems a bit similar to the BLEmicro-pro by Sekigon-Gonnoc at this stage (https://github.com/sekigon-gonnoc/BLE-Micro-Pro), who also has a qmk repo that works with it, newer revision is type-c. That said, fun project, hopefully you can add some features we haven't seen yet.

It's quite similar to that board. My board should be compatible with that QMK repo. I haven't seen the USB-C version. Do you have a link? Also I don't believe that board has a LiPo charger on board like mine. Among other nice things like it being extremely thin and exposing extra pins.
On board lipo charge will be neat for sure, good news to hear it should be compatible. I think that could be pretty dang handy for some more elaborate handwires or fiddly cases, is it going to be able to be done through the same port while in use?
I believe gonnoc was proto'ing his usb-c version a few weeks back, thought I had seen an updated link but I can't find it in bookmarks https://twitter.com/_gonnoc/status/1253251616657993728

Edit: https://nogikes.booth.pm/items/1177319 it's up now
« Last Edit: Tue, 02 June 2020, 19:30:53 by Tennstrong »

Offline myyrddraal

  • Posts: 61
Definitely in. How do you program the nrf chip? BT has flaws for a secure operations it would be good to have fixed BT fw.


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Amy answer on my question?


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Offline nicell

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  • Posts: 6
Amy answer on my question?


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Sorry I missed your post. You can program it using either DFU or DFU over UF2, which is like dragging a file to a USB drive. Look here for more details on the bootloader used: https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_nRF52_Bootloader

I'm not aware of the BT security flaws. I know that AES 128bit encryption is used when a device is paired using this board. What flaws are you thinking of?

Offline w3djyt

  • Posts: 46
All right, I'm going to ask the dumb question because I can't quite find the answer by lurking  :'(

... What boards would we use this with? Can you give examples? From all the recent group buys I've seen, they don't appear to have daughterboards for connectors unless I'm missing something obvious. :/

I'm still curious about this, however, because almost nothing is bluetooth in this community and I'd really like to add that feature to potential board setups.

Sorry for the newbness, and thanks for any help/direction.

Offline Aevyn

  • Posts: 68
All right, I'm going to ask the dumb question because I can't quite find the answer by lurking  :'(

... What boards would we use this with? Can you give examples? From all the recent group buys I've seen, they don't appear to have daughterboards for connectors unless I'm missing something obvious. :/

I'm still curious about this, however, because almost nothing is bluetooth in this community and I'd really like to add that feature to potential board setups.

Sorry for the newbness, and thanks for any help/direction.
Split keyboards that use a pro micro like the kyria, corne, sofle, etc.

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Offline w3djyt

  • Posts: 46
Split keyboards that use a pro micro like the kyria, corne, sofle, etc.

Ahhh, okay. Thanks for the keywords, I'll go digging.  :thumb:

Offline myyrddraal

  • Posts: 61
Amy answer on my question?


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Sorry I missed your post. You can program it using either DFU or DFU over UF2, which is like dragging a file to a USB drive. Look here for more details on the bootloader used: https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_nRF52_Bootloader

I'm not aware of the BT security flaws. I know that AES 128bit encryption is used when a device is paired using this board. What flaws are you thinking of?
Especially this: https://www.cisomag.com/bias-vulnerability-affects-bluetooth-devices/
But there are others as well.


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Offline racha

  • Posts: 1
I'm so interested, but I don't have the knowledge... How would I go about integrating to an existing keyboard? Do i just replace the existing board with this?

Is there a way to learn this?