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geekhack Projects => Making Stuff Together! => Topic started by: ilemondrop on Wed, 24 July 2019, 01:52:56

Title: First time building/soldering, switch activates multiple keys.
Post by: ilemondrop on Wed, 24 July 2019, 01:52:56

Hey everyone,

Really hope this is the appropriate thread/method of asking this, I checked the FAQs for a similar soldering problem, but couldn't find one. I'm using the KBD75v2 kit and the problem is when I click the "capslock" key on keyboard tester I get activation of the entire left column of keys (like tab and shift), then with the "a" key I get activation of the second column (like q and z), and the "pg down" key also hits the group of "end, del, pg up" keys. My question is whether or not this is fixable? Did I damage the PCB? Will desoldering fix this?

Side note, after my jank soldering, I plugged in the PCB to test the switches and my old keyboard stopped working for no reason so I restarted my computer then one of my lights is green now when they were all red before soldering.

If you're wondering how I screwed up so hard basically I was soldering for the first time with my Dad's hella old jank ass solder iron and I think its temp was too low. I had to hold the solder with the iron against the pad/solder for several seconds before I got some melting and then once the liquid extended a bit, it immediately solidified. Suffice to say I did some really jank soldering. I'm not sure what type of solder it was, was in a plastic tube and looked super similar to tutorials online, didn't really know there were types until I started looking up what went wrong. I did maybe like 9 keys like this, the other keys are equally jank looking but work fine for some reason. I was too excited to build it haha, definitely regret not taking it slow. I did test the PCB ahead of time and it was all swell.

Any and all help is appreciated, I hope I can make a hobby out of this despite this hiccup.

Title: Re: First time building/soldering, switch activates multiple keys.
Post by: ergonaut on Thu, 25 July 2019, 02:31:48

Hi,

I think you might get more answers if you post this in the section 'making stuff together'.

Anyway, the symptoms sound familiar to what I experienced when building an Iris. See this thread:

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=96075.msg2621852#msg2621852

The reason in my case was that one of my solder joins accidentally connected one of the diode contacts on the PCB to the manufacturers logo (which is etched into the PCB).

I'm still a beginner in these things, but there are some posts in the thread I linked which describe how to find out what's wrong.

Title: Re: First time building/soldering, switch activates multiple keys.
Post by: Sup on Thu, 25 July 2019, 10:02:48

can we also have a picture of the back side of your PCB maybe we can get further that way.

Title: Re: First time building/soldering, switch activates multiple keys.
Post by: ilemondrop on Fri, 26 July 2019, 12:43:58

Hey, thanks for moving the discussion and replying guys. I have since solved the issue. Incase others run into the same problem as me: I used the wrong type of solder, my solder iron my dad's super old jank chinese one, and it was my first time soldering. My iron was a too low temp, my solder had too much lead in it, basically no flux since it was so old, and was super thick. This resulted in some pretty crazy shapes for my soldering and ended up touching other pads and contact points. I had them desoldered and resoldered with much better solder and a clean solder iron. Still kind of surreal how easily it was fixed by this.

So for anyone else, get the right tools and keep the soldering to the pad.