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I love small keyboards, but with only 3 keys, you may as well just send ASCII codes. Nitpick aside, this does appear to be a quality project. :) A design document, user manual, and graphical simulator are lacking in many other niche keyboard projects.
I put together an ErgoDox by following the directions (and by soldering. Lots of soldering :) ) but I don't really understand how the circuits work.
In particular I'd like to put together a keyboard that connects the switches using wires instead of a PCB, but I don't know why there's all the ICs here and there, or what they're doing, or even where to find a circuit diagram of the ErgoDox, nor how to analyze those circuits.
Could you recommend a good 'next step' for getting more familiar with the various parts that go into something like an ErgoDox?
I'm enough of a noob that I'm not going to be surprised if you just link me back to your repo here (in which case I apologize in advance) :)
I saw your answer to 'how to get into hardware design'. If you're willing to answer noobie questions I've got another one for you :) I put together an ErgoDox by following the directions (and by soldering. Lots of soldering :) ) but I don't really understand how the circuits work. In particular I'd like to put together a keyboard that connects the switches using wires instead of a PCB, but I don't know why there's al…
I'd maybe suggest looking for an electrical engineering intro book or course at a level you feel comfortable with, just to get an idea of the basics.
For the ErgoDox keyboard, the schematic is actually available on their own repo [1], but it's going to look quite intimidating initially. But I found a pretty great looking article explaining the electrical design of the ErgoDox that you might find useful [2]. The ErgoDox actually looks very similar electrically to the threeboard, it uses the same MCU (atmega32u4), but of course has the extra complexity of communicating with the other half of the keyboard over the 3.5mm connector.
[0]: https://github.com/taylorconor/threeboard/blob/master/docume... [1]: https://github.com/zsa/docs/blob/master/ErgoDox%20EZ%20Schem... [2]: https://kandepet.com/dissecting-the-ergodox-the-ergonomic-pr...
I saw your answer to 'how to get into hardware design'. If you're willing to answer noobie questions I've got another one for you :) I put together an ErgoDox by following the directions (and by soldering. Lots of soldering :) ) but I don't really understand how the circuits work. In particular I'd like to put together a keyboard that connects the switches using wires instead of a PCB, but I don't know why there's al…
I don't remember if it was this exact guide, but I'm pretty sure I was following Matt3o's guide when I did it: https://matt3o.com/hand-wiring-a-custom-keyboard/
edit: it may have actually been this one: https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6050&start=
I saw your answer to 'how to get into hardware design'. If you're willing to answer noobie questions I've got another one for you :) I put together an ErgoDox by following the directions (and by soldering. Lots of soldering :) ) but I don't really understand how the circuits work. In particular I'd like to put together a keyboard that connects the switches using wires instead of a PCB, but I don't know why there's al…
Each key also has a diode which might look like an IC. This is to prevent "ghosting", where pressing a certain combination of keys looks identical to pressing another combination of keys. The lowest of low-cost keyboards don't include this, because if you only press one key at a time, ghosting can't happen. (Most people don't press more than one key at once, except for modifiers like Shift + letter. They work around this by handling modifiers specifically, often not including them as part of the matrix.) Here's an explanation: https://deskthority.net/wiki/Rollover,_blocking_and_ghosting
The search term you want for building a keyboard without a PCB is "handwiring". Here are some guides: https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=87689.0 https://matt3o.com/hand-wiring-a-custom-keyboard/
I thought I had some better resources in my bookmarks, but I don't.
I saw your answer to 'how to get into hardware design'. If you're willing to answer noobie questions I've got another one for you :) I put together an ErgoDox by following the directions (and by soldering. Lots of soldering :) ) but I don't really understand how the circuits work. In particular I'd like to put together a keyboard that connects the switches using wires instead of a PCB, but I don't know why there's al…
I followed the ai03 tutorials (https://wiki.ai03.com/books/pcb-design/page/pcb-guide-part-1...) to design the MCU area of this (The 32u4 and supporting hardware), but if you look at the traces, you can see that the switch matrix is dumb-as-bricks and can easily be replaced with some kind of handwiring.
Don't try to replicate the diode banks if you want sane wiring. The linked tutorial assumes someone is designing for function instead of form.
Example: https://www.amazon.com/4-Key-Programmable-Mechanical-Keyboar...