BACKGROUND We've seen a lot of Jetfire and Black Bird owners having issues with the original PCBs and/or searching for replacement PCBs and plates. We were working on this project for quite a long time last year and even had working prototypes, but we had to shelf it at some point for several reasons. First, we needed some extra headspace to deal with other more pressing projects, especially in the midst of COVID. Second, we wanted to offer solutions that are cross-compatible with the original Duck PCBs and Plates, which would have taken much more time for measurements since they were (and still are?) not available. We've decided to abandon that ambition because there's little point in doing so to be honest, and will offer our own PCB and Plate solutions that, when paired together, are guaranteed to work well on the boards.
Personally, I love these boards to bits and think they are the best keyboards with numpad, ever. Wish Duck would make a round 2 for them, although it seems unlikely
WHAT'S BEEN DONE AND WILL BE DONEAs mentioned, we've had working prototypes for about a year now, but it's been a long time and there are things we want to do differently now. That's why we're working on new (and better) designs and will make prototypes as soon as possible. These are the things we will be focusing on:
- Fitment with the boards: the first prototypes fit quite well, but there are some room for improvement, especially with the placement of the LED indicators.
- Trying Type-C: the original Jetfire and Black Bird PCBs use Micro-USB and Mini-respectively, and we'll see if we can make Type-C on our PCBs work.
- Underglow RGB improvement: mostly on the Jetfire because there's a "dark spot" on the front that we want to address.
The PCBs are of course, QMK and VIA compatible. The upcoming prototypes will use the Atmega32A chipset, which is plenty enough for what we're trying to achieve.
In terms of plate material options, we'll probably go with the usual suspects: FR4, Aluminium and/or PC.
At this rate, we aim to run the GB some time late June/ early July.
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP
This is probably not the "we'll make it happen if you're interested" kind of IC. We'll do it anyway, and would really appreciate your opinion on what we should do to make the best out of it. Considering the limited number of Jetfire and Black Bird boards in the wild, this will probably be a one-time thing, so we'll try our best to make it right and hope to have your support along the way.
Please consider joining our Discord Server:
https://discord.com/invite/fSsbECG for updates and discussions, on top of the ones posted here.
