geekhack
geekhack Projects => Making Stuff Together! => Topic started by: tenzonakami on Fri, 28 October 2016, 08:15:55
-
Hi guys, I'm on my first Keyboard Building Project!
A friend of mine has a broken keyboard (after opening it I found out it's just the PCB, the switches are all good.) and it comes with a Cherry MX Blue!
So yeah, I have the switches and the keycaps, but nowhere to find a Controller.
Why don't go the Teensy way? It's expensive here. Like soo expensive. Could cost me somewhere to get a new Ducky keyboard.
I've got my hands on a SparkFun's Pro Micro, anyone can help me with this? Thanks!
-
I would first check if there is a way to repair the keyboard.. or to transplant the switches and keycaps to a kit keyboard.
If that is not possible, then reverse-engineer the keyboard matrix. Find the number of rows and columns.
The Teensy 2.0 has 25 pins for rows and columns. If there are more, you would need the Teensy++ 2.0 which has more.
The Pro Micro has the same microcontroller as the Teensy 2.0 but fewer pins ...
It is also more fiddly to use. There is a thread on Deskthority (https://deskthority.net/workshop-f7/how-to-use-a-pro-micro-as-a-cheap-controller-converter-like-soarer-s-t8448.html?hilit=Pro%20Micro) about it with lots of information.
-
I would first check if there is a way to repair the keyboard.. or to transplant the switches and keycaps to a kit keyboard.
If that is not possible, then reverse-engineer the keyboard matrix. Find the number of rows and columns.
The Teensy 2.0 has 25 pins for rows and columns. If there are more, you would need the Teensy++ 2.0 which has more.
The Pro Micro has the same microcontroller as the Teensy 2.0 but fewer pins ...
It is also more fiddly to use. There is a thread on Deskthority (https://deskthority.net/workshop-f7/how-to-use-a-pro-micro-as-a-cheap-controller-converter-like-soarer-s-t8448.html?hilit=Pro%20Micro) about it with lots of information.
Hi and thanks for answering. Unfortunately, since I think there's no way to recover it.. I just desoldered all the switches and dumped the whole PCB.
So what I got right here is just 108 switches of Cherry MX Blue and it's keycaps.
I mean, the Teensy is like around 50-100 bucks here. There's no way to buy them from foreign site since my country have some kind of import bla bla and your stuff will be gone for good if you try to buy something without import legals or whatsoever here.
-
108 switches are going to need a 10x11 or 9x12 matrix, so 21 pins on the controller - the pro micro has 16 plus another 5 if you're willing and able to solder directly to the chip if I'm reading correctly, so it's possible but no pins left for caps/num lock LEDs. This would not be very easy to understand though - a 6x18 would be much easier, but that needs more pins...
The other option would be using an MCP23018 IO expander as used in the Ergodox - they are cheap here but not sure about where you are?