time spent: ~21 hrs

Yin//Yang

Description: My first attempt at a keyboard, which was also my first attempt at any designing whatsoever. I had wanted to buy a keyboard for the longest time. So, when I found out about this program through a friend of mine I was extremely excited. Little did I know this would lead into a weeks long journey of trials and tribulations, including very long nights and headache.

Credits: Shaan- Was a huge helping hand in showing me the ropes of KiCad Dimitri Tsiplakos- Another huge helping hand for OnShape Hex6: Saved me a lot of headache by recommending me diodes and showing me how to actually use Digikey

Of course, thanks to Hackclub for this entire program, this was my first experience into tech and it was very cool and awesome!!!

6-24-25

Was my first day working on this. Shaan helped me to set up KiCad and I started laying out the schematic. I finished the day with a partially completed schematic. I ended up loosely following a 75% layout with a couple of my own design choices, mainly a strip of LEDs and perhaps a rotary encoder.

~2 hrs

6-25-25

I finished my schematic and would move onto my PCB. I double checked to make sure I didn't make any silly mistakes on the schematic, like forgetting to add a no connect or forgetting to route some switches. It would be so silly if there was a mistake like that. This was also the day I decided to make this hotswapable, and so i spent atleast an hour figuring that out. I finished the day with a lot of the PCB done.

~2-3 hrs

6-26-25

I figured out I could use the backside of the PCB for minimal cost. I made my first uh unique design choice here. For aesthetic reasons i wanted the rotary encoder on the top of the PCB. This meant that the Raspberry Pi had no room for the USB port to be there. Therefore, I planned to use an extension cable to maintain aesthetics. I also finished the rest of my routing this day.

~1-2 hrs

6-27-25

I added some silkscreen art to the PCB. The sunglasses have been synonymous with my digital presence for as long as I remember so I wanted to add that. I went into MS paint and made a quick signature. As a final touch, I added a pixel art of a dinosaur and a bee to commemorate my friends who helped me with this insane project. This is what is looked like by the end of the day.

~1-2 hrs

6-28-25

It was finally time to CAD. This was where Dimitri came in clutch. He showed me the ropes of OnShape and I started making the plate for this keyboard. I continued to do this for the following days, making slow progress.

~2 hs

7-1-25

I am so god damn freaking stuipid, like room temperature IQ. I somehow forgot to add an entire row of keys in the schematic, such a silly, very very very silly mistake. I agonized over this for so long. This set me back by so many unnecessary hours. This was also the day I figured out i had to add holes into the plate to account for stabilizers. The library I used for my keys on the PCB didn't include cutouts for screw-in stabilizers, so I spents hours trying to figure it out.

~3-4 hrs

7-2-25

This day was spent practically solely rerouting the mess I made. I stayed up until like 2 am just mind numbingly trying to solve this jumble of wires. It was like doing that one Among Us minigame but for the same amount of time it takes for paint to dry. This was also the day i finally found out how to add the stabilizer cut-outs. The method i used was to generate KLE data of only keys I needed for stabilizers, then I used that raw data into a plate generator, then finally import that DFX into Onshape.

~3-4 hrs

7-3-25

I finished up the rewiring and spent essentially 5-8 hours CADing this case. I thought it would be a cool idea to make it tilted and gasket mounted. The amount of headache it was to figure out this entire thing was really cool and awesome.This was also the day i decided to add imprints into my case, and figuring that out and seeing the result was pretty cool. I got through so many podcasts it was insane. I wanted to get this done in time for Highway so I had to lock in today. Y'know what, it turned out pretty good for my ametuer attempt at all of this.

~too long