The Fold Board!
This is a super cool keyboard that I am making
It folds!
and fits nicely in a bag
Total Time spent: 38
13th of June
Did the entire pcb in one day.
Since this is technically a split board, I would normally have needed 2 micro controllers and ttrs. But I aint doing allat.
My design uses one microcontroller and uses 16 wires to connect the 2 halves and bring the right side matrix to the left.
The wires can also function as the way the 2 boards are held together(joke there will be more supports)
I still need to add silkscreen so its not technically done but functionality is done.
Anyways explaining the keyboard.
Its a normal keyboard thats about 75%ish idk it has 84 keys.
it folds and has 16 wires to connect it together
Hours spent: 4
15th of June
Started work on the case and trying to guage out how I am going to figure out how to have the 2 halves connect and how I want it to look
Got this so far, spent a few hours on it and looks kinda nice. might do some more work onto it before moving to the fold
Hours spent: 2
17-20th June
Did little bits and bobs of work, not too much but small touches on the pcb, and cad whereever i got time. total time across these days is like 2 hours max
21st of June
I am actually stupid.
can you spot the problem here?
thats right
i put 4 rows instead of 5
time to start from scratch again. YAAYAYAYAYA
anyways did lots of work today on my case, went through a few designs, got some of the nitty gritty down, also did a few touches on the pcb but nothing significant.
Time spent: 4 hours
23rd of June
Today I went through some designs for the bridge of the 2 halves.
This is what I was originally going for but that doesn't really fit well with the rest of the model. so then I tried a different one.
This one is more straightforward and allows me to make it a bit slimmer. idk if i mentioned this before but i want to be able to push these 2 halves together when it lays on a table. to the bridge needs to be able to fit in the case.
In the end I just settled for a completely flat bridge. I had the curve before because it would go around the top plate but now I had shortened the pcb and plate in order to give the bridge room to sit.
Time Spent: 5 hours
29th of June
Okay time to start grinding ts.
I polished up on the case and started adding final details with usb port placement and added the proper placements for keycaps and added my logo onto it.
Time spent: 2 hours
30th of June
Firmware time!
I reinstalled mac and turns out my mac is too old to install qmk so I cant compile code and have to copy paste previous firmware folders and then change the pins and keymaps. Also github copilot is soooooooo good. i love it i love it i love it
It saved me soooooo much time with firmware writing.
it does all the zombie work for you
Sure it has a few hiccups but its still amazing
Time spent: 2 hours
1st of June
I just realised that I need to have some sort of thing to hold it together.
So I made a bit that uses a rubber band to hold
Looks like that for now. might change if it doesnt work
Then I made my BOM by scouring for a bit on aliexpress but most of the stuff was easy to find since i have made a board before and I just used the same places.
Then the readme. That was nice. I think it looks nice, better than my last one at least
Time spent 4 hours
2nd of June
Submitted :D
17th of July
Came back from underity and am pooped. the parts arrived a bit back just after I left. anyways i will update
18th of July
Soldered the pcb and printed the case. Kinda messed up the screw holes so need to fix that
hours spent: 5
20th of July
Finished the base and now I need to make Keycaps. but will put it off a bit to finish my other project
hours spent: 2
2nd Of August
Made half the keycaps and it took me so long to line everything up :sob:
But they didnt even fit :( It fits enough to stay on but not enough to go all the way down on the stem. going to have to add more tolerance to it.
anyways that sucks but meh. imma take a break for a bit cuz im not bothered rn
Time spent: 2 hours
13th of August
My printer had a poop of death :sob:
Im cooked
21st of august
Replaced the centre wires with longer ones because they kept snapping. also made paper keycaps because I cant do printed ones. I just stuck them on with blu tack.
Anyways done :)
Time Spent: 4 hours