Prequel

Okay, so I decided to talk about my keyboard. How I made it is a bit of a mess. It all started with Highway. I made a pretty bad split keyboard, and it didn’t work because I bought the wrong keycaps. Then I made another one for Grounded since I already had allmost all the pieces to make it.

The idea started when I had no project to do and was bored, so I decided to make a keyboard because I kind of had an obsession with them. I first built an ortholinear split keyboard. It was really simple, but I used the wrong footprints, so it didn’t work. I cried for a bit. I was really sad that the only hardware project I had made didn’t work.

But then, when Grounded came, I made a split keyboard again. This one was way smaller; it only has 36 keys total. I’m using it every day (except when I play Minecraft) and this is the story of that :3

Designing

It all started with me designing the shape of the keyboard because I wanted to decide how my keyboard would look. It was very similar to the Totem keyboard. After that, I made the schematic, which was fairly easy since it was just a matrix with a Seeed Xiao nRF. That part went really fast.

Next, I added everything to the PCB and placed all the components. Then I wired the PCB, which is where I struggled for the first time. I didn’t know much about making PCB’s, so it took a long time and I ran into a bunch of problems. In the end, it turned out pretty good though a bit messy, not the cleanest, but pretty good.

After that, I added a bunch of silkscreen and other details. Then I decided it was time to make the case :yay: I was able to make the plate, but then I thought, Yelp, I want to change the design. I decided to go for a Corne style-ish layout. Updating it was really easy I only changed the shape and location of the switches.

But then it was the time to make the case i procrastinated a bit too much soo it took 2 months oop, and now it’s in the magazine :yay:

Software

Software was a bit hard since I’m not very good at it. I tried vibecoding it a few times and struggled a lot, but my brother told me about RMK (Rusty Mechanical Keyboards). It’s a keyboard software made in Rust, and it’s really cool. It’s compatible with Vial, an application where you can change what each key does using a GUI or on the web. It’s really useful, and I’ve used it a lot.

Once I switched to RMK, coding became way easier. I asked my brother for help a few times and got a bit of help from the RMK Discord, and then I was able to make the software :woo:

Building It

Building took about 2 hours, but only because I spent a lot of time troubleshooting why one of the batteries wasn’t working. It turned out to be a faulty one :pf:. After changing the battery, it was really easy, and it just worked :yay:.

I used the keyboard for a while without a case, but then when I made the case, the printing wasn’t working for some reason. It was stringing a lot, and I only got it to work when my brother sliced it instead of me. Now it’s done :yay:.