Total time spent thus far: 50h

January: Research

Started looking at how to make my keyboard (looking at YouTube videos, etc)
Created a plan
- Make the keyboard a 100% layout
- Add an OLED screen to display extra info
Started thinking about what components to use (what type of switches,e.g., red, brown, blue, etc.)
Started looking at the pinout of the Pi Pico (my microcontroller)

Total time spent: 5h

May 17-20: PCB making

started creating the PCB
Found out that the PI Pico doesn't have enough pins for my matrix for the keys
- Thought about using Japanese matrices, but instead I opted to use the MCP23017_SO since I want to learn how to solder SMD components
After creating the schematic, I posted it on Slack to get some feedback
Then I started creating the PCB itself
Routing was hard, so for the first time, I used Vias Total time spent: 15h

started creating the chassis
Since I'm using somewhat custom spacing, it took a long time to make the top part of my keyboard
Once done, I started making the bottom part
After that, I started seeing how I was going to print out the chassis
- JLC charges 100$ for the chassis
So instead, I made the chassis printable by splitting it into 3 parts and joining them via these standoffs that I made Total time spent: 8h

Started making firmware
- took too long setting up QMK (like 5 hours in one day)
Found out the MCP23017_SO is way too slow since it's using the I2C connection protocol
- Instead im using the SN74HC165N, which uses the spi protocal which is 100x faster
- replaced it in the PCB
made the keyboard layout for my keyboard in QMK May 24th:
Took almost 5 hours to make the keyboard work, not even including the custom matrix
- Not good with command-based apps, so I need to work on this in the future
made a custom matrix to read from the SN74HC165N
- TOOK A LONG TIME JUST TO LEARN HOW TO DO IT
made the OLED work
Here are some code issues that I had today:
- setPinOutput(MATRIXCOLPINS[c]) failed because the macro received 21 arguments instead of 1, likely because MATRIXCOLPINS[c] expands improperly.
- writePinHigh(MATRIXCOLPINS[c]) and writePinLow(MATRIXCOLPINS[col]) also failed due to the same macro argument issue.
- Macros like gpiosetpinoutputpushpull, gpiowritepinhigh, and gpiowritepin_low were not recognized as functions; they're macros and not meant to handle complex input.
- matrixscanchange is used without declaration, leading to an implicit function declaration error.
- All warnings were treated as errors (-Werror flag), causing the build to fail on these issues. Total time spent: 15h

Total time spent: 2h