May 23: It begins. Some planning and schematic work.

After thinking for a little while, I settled on a mechanical keyboard with an LCD and some USB ports. This will be my first time designing a PCB, and I don't want to choose something to diffifult, but I think this should be doable and pretty cool. To start, I looked online for similar designs, and found some things I can potentially use as reference. (Pi Pico Keyboard, PCB Keyboard, and USB hub). I decided to use KiCad to design the PCB because it seems pretty widely used is free.

I am going to use a Rapsberry Pi Pico because of its small form factor, low price, and popular use in similar projects. It looks like if I want to be able to split the USB input, I will need to have the Pi Pico connected downstream of something else, so I won't be able to use the USB connector it comes with. Based on the datasheet, though, I should be able to surface mount it onto the PCB and use the test points to make a connector. Looking online, it seems like I can apply solder paste to the PCB, place the Pico on, and heat it up with a hot air soldering gun. Unfortunately, these cost around $30 so I may have to find some workaround. It seems kind of janky, but it might be better to just use a cable that plugs into the pico but is attatched internally. If I can't get this to work, I may have to abandon the extra ports :(

After spending a little while trying to input pcb elements into kicad, I decided to just use EasyEda, because it is also free, seems easier, and many of the LCSC components easily available. Unfortunately, I am having some problems understanding the pinout of the USB-C connector which I want the keyboard to connect with. I have to go to bed now, but this is what I have so far.

Today, work has been somewhat slow, but I think it should start to go better once I have this software figured out. 4 hrs

May 24: Schematics

Today I want to mostly finish the schematics, at least for the keyboard part. Last time, I forgot to save my schematic, but it is fine, because I only made slight progresss. Since I want to use USB-C, I needed to figure out what the special pins are for. It seems like many of them can be shorted, but CC1 and CC2 need to be pulled down. Next, I looked on the components catalog and found what I was looking for earlier: 4 pin wire to board connector. This should let me plug the Pico in without needing the test points. I made a test PCB to see about specific parts, and everything is fine except for the Pico, which it can only make the pads for (assembly costs +$50), so I will solder it on manually. I also added the USB-A ports for mice and etc.. It is taking a while to find the correct components and figure out how to read the spec sheets, but I think I am getting a hang of it. This is what I have so far.

Thinking more about the display on the keyboard, I think that I will make it be a Now Playing thing like this Spotify display 2.5 hrs

# May 25: Key layout

Now, it is time to make the keyboard. I used keyboard-layout-editor.com to generate a layout that I like,