Hi All,
So I've decided to jump in and start learning how to build my own PCB. I'm a software developer who's done limited work on hardware and is relying on a highschool level knowledge of electronics. I'm willing to throw away life savings at this (well, some of them). This should be fun
So to start it off, I'm looking a little bit at the necessary components and the basics of a keyboard PCB seems to consist of:
- the electrical circuitry wiring the switches into a matrix
- diodes for each switch
- a microcontroller - yay, I can write this code!
- some kind of USB input (output?) connected to the microcontroller (henceforth named mikey)
Let's leave LEDs out of it for a brief moment (hope to get back to this in the future).
Some things to consider are:
- Series/Parallel, I'm assuming this affects a lot of the requirements for current/voltage and greatly determines the makeup of the matrix.
- Current/Voltage for mikey
- NKRO, I read in the wiki that the diodes help for this, but no clue why...
I'm hoping others are interested to learn these specifics too and fulfill the quest to build the world's greatest keyboard. Help?