Actually Building A Perfect Keyboard

This is an addendum to Building A Perfect Keyboard.

Figuring Out The Physical Layout

Planck had 47 keys, out of which I haven’t used 6 at all (the unreachable thumb/pinky buttons), and 8 that I used rarely (the leftmost and the rightmost columns — tab, caps lock, pipe, etc). But the rest I couldn’t get rid of as I wanted to be able to type sentences in English without using modifiers, i.e. one keypress per character.

This left me with a 15x15 classic qwerty layout, with four thumb buttons (two per thumb, more hurt my brain).

Deciding what layout is good for me was a long process, my tip — start with more buttons and reduce once you feel ready.

My first keyboard almost worked: I forgot to actually solder some sockets’ sides, and starting the second row all my buttons were shifted in a mysterious pattern (a firmware config issue).

But! The beauty of these projects is that there is no one else to blame but yourself, but also any issue is fixable by yourself. Eventually I figure it out.

Surprisingly the material part of the keyboard has some leeway in terms of build quality for it to function well. With some incarnations (I had multiple builds by now) I had to nudge the chip a little from time to time forokey t wrk. Some had a rrreapeating rproblem. But mostly — they just wrrked.

Prerequisites

Tools and Knowledge

To build one of these, you’ll need:

• A soldering kit (the cheapest+ one will do unless soldering gonna be your thing in the future): soldering iron and solder, a holding stand, and a brass sponge tip cleaner; optional: tweezers, flux pen, desoldering pump (good luck, still can’t use it properly).
• Basic knowledge of how to solder, and I can’t stress enough “basic”. This was my first serious soldering attempt, and I did badly, but five PCB boards later I did mediocre! Watching some soldering tips on YT and practice on the real deal were enough for me, but you do you.
• PCB board. I know right? “This escalated quickly” you might think, but don’t worry, here are your options, you need to acquire either:
• Basic PCB board modification skill — I used Ergogen to generate an initial PCB file and then KiCad to modify it to my needs. Not in the scope of this post, but it’s easier than it looks and a lot of fun! My first design file was denied by the PCB printing service for some “out-of-bounds-of-something cryptic error” which was very confusing and disheartening, but after a short investigation I fixed it here and there, resubmitted, and it was accepted and worked when soldered on the first try!
• Or PCB board design download skill — find one, download, send to a printing service, done.

Materials

The needed materials, with links to a random shop.

• 2 x Nine!Nano v2 $25 each — these are the most expensive parts, so be careful with them.
• 2 x Machine sockets and pins $7 each — if you don’t want to resolder your nanos (you don’t want to resolder your nanos), you’ll need both the sockets and pins — sockets to solder into the PCBs, pins to solder into the nanos, so you can plug/unplug them indefinitely.
• 34 x Keycaps (for my layout)
• 34 x Switches — if you go for different switches and caps, don’t forget to adjust the PCB accordingly!
• 2 x Batteries
• 2 x On/Off Switches — and optional 2 x Reset Buttons
• 2 x Printed PCBs — the Ergogen design is smart! You only need to print one PCB piece, even if the halves are asymmetric (they usually are), you just solder everything on the other side and flip the chip.

Soldering

Some general tips for soldering:

• First heat the surface then add the solder, it’s easier, faster, and produces a much better contact.
• Flux is your friend. Flux makes solder stick to metal surfaces and avoid non-metal.

Hot-Swap Sockets

These are the easiest — two contacts onto two pads:

1. Flux all the things
2. Add solder on half of the pads only
3. Place the socket, heat, and push in until solid
4. Solder the other halves

Otherwise, you’ll have trouble making them even.

The Chip

This is where my hands go a little shaky, $50 spent on twitches (lowercase) would do that to you.

Remember that preheat-the-surface-first rule? Well, when the surface costs $25 and the heat is 350°C (650°F) you probably should be extra careful:

• Slide the sockets stick into the PCB, and solder it in (flux all the things, put the soldering iron on a pin on the other side, preheat, add solder, lift, repeat)
• Put pins into the sockets, slide the Nano on top (evenly), and solder it in (I recommend taking a minute admiring the gentle elements of modern technology on that tiny Nano before your iron slips and devours the scene)

On/Off Switch

This is the most risk-free operation among these. That is unless you mess it up so badly the pads peel off — in which case you’ll have to resolder everything onto a new PCB.

So, it’s a good idea to start with it. The only reason I always leave it for last — it’s annoying, my sausage fingers were not made for this. Same for the reset buttons.

Result!

Plug the switches in, put the caps on, and lift off. Or, well, admire your work visually because you’ll need two install firmware first.