(ITT:Turbo-Newb) Pre-Planning my first circuit board and general questions.

[maltman]

Hey everyone, I want to design my own board, basically just like the Ergodox but with more buttons and a closer thumb cluster.

I've been looking over the Ergodox design in KiCad and I've got some (hopefully not so stupid) questions.

The first one is what is this star pattern and is it necessary?:



Here's another photo of it




My other question is that is it possible to add more buttons to the Ergodox? Would I have to reprogram the firmware myself? (my coding is pleb tier).

Lastly, do you have any control over how the back of the circuit board looks in KiCad?? If not then how is it that the left hand side of the Ergodox is produced from the one .kicad_pcb file which only contains the right hand?


Thank's for reading my thread.

Cheers

[TalkingTree]

is this star pattern and is it necessary?:

It looks merely aesthetical to me.

is it possible to add more buttons to the Ergodox? Would I have to reprogram the firmware myself?

You're not adding buttons to a ready made Ergodox, you're making your own PCB, so you can add as many buttons as you want, granted that your matrix fits your MCU and eventually I/O expanders. Of course you'll have to make your own firmware for that but there are a few firmwares' sources that you can use. What MCU are you using?

Lastly, do you have any control over how the back of the circuit board looks in KiCad??

Such softwares usually show all layers together, so you can hide the layers you don't want in the way.

how is it that the left hand side of the Ergodox is produced from the one .kicad_pcb file which only contains the right hand?

The Ergodox is a specular board made of two identical parts but flipped. If you look closely, every switch is made of four pins. That's because you can install the switch to either side. My guess is that Dox wanted to save PCB fabrication costs by making a single PCB that could be used for both hands. In other words, you need two copies of the same PCB to make a whole board.

[maltman]

Thanks for the input,

OK I'm not going to include the star pattern then good.

My plan is to base my board off the Ergodox as much as possible so that I don't have to work very hard or be creative. So it will have Teensy and I'd like to base it off the Ergodox firmware and I'd like it to be made of two identical parts as well because that sounds like it makes things simpler.

I probably will want to add about 5 - 10 more buttons, maybe more. I won't be adding extra rows or columns, just filling out the pinky and thumb sections and getting rid of some of the larger keys for smaller ones.

Is teensy the best way to go about with this do you think?

[joey]

Is teensy the best way to go about with this do you think?

It's the easiest way!

[TalkingTree]

I won't be adding extra rows or columns, just filling out the pinky and thumb sections and getting rid of some of the larger keys for smaller ones.

I'm not sure about this, if you're splitting a large key in two, you then need another matrix entry for each of the key, that means an extra row or column. Yet expanding the matrix is not a problem at all, granted that you have enough pins on your controller.

Is teensy the best way to go about with this do you think?

Any 32u4 breakout board will actually do. Are  you considering other breakout boards?

[maltman]

No I'm just going to go with the teensy. Once again, I just want my project to be simple and along a well trod path. I'm not trying to do any trailblazing here because I lack experience.

(I did some research on what a breakout board is right now. I don't understand how it is different from a micro-controller can someone explain to me please?)

[TalkingTree]

I did some research on what a breakout board is right now. I don't understand how it is different from a micro-controller

The microcontroller is the integrated circuit itself, like the ATMega32u4.
A breakout board is a small printed circuit board that bears the microcontroller, all the components required by it to work and breaks out the pins into more accessible pads. Arduino Pro Micro and Teensy 2.0 are breakout boards for the ATMega32u4.

This article might explain better.

[maltman]

Can anyone help my out? I want to get rid of this extra big keys on the side of the Ergodox and add another row of ordinary keys instead. The more the merrier I say.

So my question is why do these pinky keys on the right have different pads than the ordinary keys? There seem to be some extra pads sticking out the side... Can I just copy paste the ordinary keys here and will it all function the same (with some rewiring of course)

[maltman]

Here is a rough draft of what I am thinking of. More buttons on the pinkies (why not?), more buttons on the thumb and of course thumb keys closer to the rest of the hand.

I feel kind of bad for leaving the size of the ergodox behind because it may be hard to get a case for it.

Also the thumb cluster looks like garbage. I swapped out the 2u keys for 2 1u's and a 1.25u. I reasoned that this is best because the thumb could have a hard time reaching a key in between two other keys, whereas it would have an easier time reaching external keys. It looks ugly though and I may be better off just going for all 1u keys. or maybe all 1.25 u keys with a larger thumb cluster??

Please critique me and help me out here. I'm just a lazy newb trying my best to make life easier for my hands with no pretense to greatness.









12 keys on the thumbs (three columns four rows) is not too much in my opinion. Just imagine all of the key strokes you can potentially save by assigning macros to those keys.

[TalkingTree]

why do these pinky keys on the right have different pads than the ordinary keys?

They can be rotated by ninety degrees. Don't ask me why though.

More buttons on the pinkies (why not?)

More pinkies buttons means more hand stretching, which could be uncomfortable. You should decide on this very carefully, if you ask me.

Also the thumb cluster looks like garbage. I swapped out the 2u keys for 2 1u's and a 1.25u. I reasoned that this is best because the thumb could have a hard time reaching a key in between two other keys, whereas it would have an easier time reaching external keys. It looks ugly though and I may be better off just going for all 1u keys. or maybe all 1.25 u keys with a larger thumb cluster??

Being it a personal project, you should go for whatever makes you more comfortable. If it was me, I would actually slim out the number of keys, rather than adding more of them, and use multiple layers.

[maltman]

My reasoning for the extra keys is that the Ergodox already added extra keys to the index fingers and that these require more stretching and wrist rotation than ordinary keys. I would put seldom used buttons on the outer columns, like the windows key, or print screen.

I guess I could prototype different layouts first on a piece of sheet metal. I just feel like that would be more work than I want to do. I just want to make the board and start using it. Maybe I'm underestimating the time it takes to do the PCB. Maybe I will just make some small adjustments to the vanilla ergodox thumb cluster and work with that for now. Does anybody have gerbers or kicad files for an Ergodox with a closer thumb cluster?

What's your ideal board talking tree?

[TalkingTree]

Does anybody have gerbers or kicad files for an Ergodox with a closer thumb cluster?

Many people forked Dox' original Github repository, you might wanna have a look at some of them.

What's your ideal board talking tree?

The Ergodox is a great keyboard but unfortunately it won't work for me because the symbols on the ANSI right hand are actually accented vowels on the italian layout and I need them on my main layer.