geekhack
geekhack Projects => Making Stuff Together! => Topic started by: Treadstone on Sat, 11 July 2015, 17:17:08
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Hello,
I've been lurking in the dark on these forums and finally decided to make a thread! Anyway, I got bored of my standard K95 and I really want my second keyboard to be made by myself.
I have a budget of around $200-$250 that I've put aside from my scholarship. The plan is to make GON TKL with NerD V2 PCB and acryllic all-semi-transparent case. The problem is, since this is supposed to highly pricey keyboard, I really need to keep it within the budget.
Since I already have Corsair K95, I was thinking of ordering the following from GON site (somebody please correct me if there are excess/missing items I have in my cart; note the resistors):
(http://i.imgur.com/1P136HB.png)
and using the pieces that are already in the keyboard - Cherry MX Red switches. GON Order should be somewhere around $180, so the rest of the money would be for Backlit Doubleshot PBT Keycaps (not sure if acryllic is compatible with NerD V2).
Any suggestion guys? I'm pretty much inexperienced in all this... I should probably test my soldering on a few test pieces and not straight on the PCB :)
Cheers!
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Looking through your order you have 50 LEDs and 200 resistors - you need a maximum of one resistor per LED. Depending how they're wired there may be two or three LEDs sharing one resistor, and the value you need depends how many and what colour LEDs it's connected to so you need a GON expert to advise you here, and they'll probably need to know where you are putting the LEDs? Also the resistors and LEDs are SMD which means they're small and sit on top of the PCB. SMD is not the easiest thing to solder and if you put an LED backwards it's not easy to remove it, so I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner.
I hope you're also aware that GON has about a 5 month delay between ordering and dispatch at the moment so this is not going to be a nice summer project, and I hope you're taking into account the $47.90 for shipping? You're going to need to find some cheap keycaps to keep it under $250!
If it still seems like a good idea and you like the red switches there's nothing wrong with your plan to salvage them (and the stabilisers for the larger keys, assuming they're PCB mount) but could you sell your K95 for more than the price of buying new ones? Desoldering is tedious and harder than soldering and it seems a shame to destroy a perfectly functioning keyboard :)
Another option would be ordering from winkeyless.kr, I've just done a quick mock up and the price came out about the same with all the tricky SMD soldering already done, but you'd still get the fun and satisfaction of soldering the switches and diodes and putting it all together. No idea on the order delay but I've not seen people grumbling so I assume it's shorter than GONs...
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Looking through your order you have 50 LEDs and 200 resistors - you need a maximum of one resistor per LED. Depending how they're wired there may be two or three LEDs sharing one resistor, and the value you need depends how many and what colour LEDs it's connected to so you need a GON expert to advise you here, and they'll probably need to know where you are putting the LEDs? Also the resistors and LEDs are SMD which means they're small and sit on top of the PCB. SMD is not the easiest thing to solder and if you put an LED backwards it's not easy to remove it, so I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner.
I hope you're also aware that GON has about a 5 month delay between ordering and dispatch at the moment so this is not going to be a nice summer project, and I hope you're taking into account the $47.90 for shipping? You're going to need to find some cheap keycaps to keep it under $250!
If it still seems like a good idea and you like the red switches there's nothing wrong with your plan to salvage them (and the stabilisers for the larger keys, assuming they're PCB mount) but could you sell your K95 for more than the price of buying new ones? Desoldering is tedious and harder than soldering and it seems a shame to destroy a perfectly functioning keyboard :)
Another option would be ordering from winkeyless.kr, I've just done a quick mock up and the price came out about the same with all the tricky SMD soldering already done, but you'd still get the fun and satisfaction of soldering the switches and diodes and putting it all together. No idea on the order delay but I've not seen people grumbling so I assume it's shorter than GONs...
I'm going for SMD Purple Pink on back side of the pcb, and sky blue for in key. It'd be good to sell my K95, but I have faulty LEDs + I need to reconnect gaming macro keys since I couldn't wash it with isopropyl after I spilled my milkshake all over it q_q
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I'm going for SMD Purple Pink on back side of the pcb, and sky blue for in key. It'd be good to sell my K95, but I have faulty LEDs + I need to reconnect gaming macro keys since I couldn't wash it with isopropyl after I spilled my milkshake all over it q_q
Haha, milkshake makes a not perfectly functioning keyboard so good idea on extracting the switches rather than binning them!
You have no sky blue LEDs in your order, but at least the extra resistors make sense now :)
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Haha, milkshake makes a not perfectly functioning keyboard so good idea on extracting the switches rather than binning them!
You have no sky blue LEDs in your order, but at least the extra resistors make sense now :)
Amazingly it's still working flawlessly since I give it a good bath in isopropyl... so I don't think I did too much damage to anything since nothing was fried, and the part not working is not accessible for a good clean. It might even work after all this time :o
I'll try to find sky blue leds in my local store since there is no option for them on GON site.
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Why only 20 diodes? You'll need one diode per switch.
If you live in the US, it could be cheaper to buy many of these components on electronics retailers. Mouser (http://www.mouser.com/), Digikey (http://www.digikey.com/) and Newark (http://www.newark.com/) are my favorites.
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Why only 20 diodes? You'll need one diode per switch.
If you live in the US, it could be cheaper to buy many of these components on electronics retailers. Mouser (http://www.mouser.com/), Digikey (http://www.digikey.com/) and Newark (http://www.newark.com/) are my favorites.
he seems to have ordered 5 x 20 diodes if I'm understanding that correctly
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Why only 20 diodes? You'll need one diode per switch.
If you live in the US, it could be cheaper to buy many of these components on electronics retailers. Mouser (http://www.mouser.com/), Digikey (http://www.digikey.com/) and Newark (http://www.newark.com/) are my favorites.
he seems to have ordered 5 x 20 diodes if I'm understanding that correctly
Correct. I live in Croatia which is EU, and I don't find my local store anywhere near equipped. I did not order anything yet since I'm still in the planning phase. I just hope I could use those K95 switches or land some group buy of mx reds that does not have huge shipping price as on Massdrop.
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Why only 20 diodes? You'll need one diode per switch.
If you live in the US, it could be cheaper to buy many of these components on electronics retailers. Mouser (http://www.mouser.com/), Digikey (http://www.digikey.com/) and Newark (http://www.newark.com/) are my favorites.
he seems to have ordered 5 x 20 diodes if I'm understanding that correctly
Oh, my bad.
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Good luck with the build. The color combination of purple and sky blue should look pretty cool!
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I'm still surfing around my country's shops to see if there are any good quality LEDs. Even tho I might save myself the hassle and just order it since the delivery cost stays the same. I can't imagine custom fees... but we'll work something out :'(
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Does anyone know if there is possibilty of using rgb LEDs with the PCB? Or a possibility of somehow modifying the controller kernel or smth?
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I think it's not possible to use rgb leds.