i'm building a keyboard from scratch 

in one of the more ridiculous things i've done, i designed an ortholinear keyboard that can use the wider modifiers from a 40%/60% kit. it's been done before (see the Spacey, which is in group buy now) but i designed it for my specific typing needs

so i'm going hand-wire and program this thing. i got the cut acrylic plate in today and plugged in all of my spare switches.

i'm calling it a Quirk, because it's... got some quirks.

re: i'm building a keyboard from scratch 

@astra when you say hand-wire it, are you actually wiring it or are you going to use a PCB?
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re: i'm building a keyboard from scratch 

@Felthry actual wiring, because i haven't designed a PCB yet. i just downloaded kicad tonight tho! (if i can get around how to do this, the second version of this will be on a PCB, with an aluminum plate, and i'll get a case cut for it too)

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re: i'm building a keyboard from scratch 

@astra i'd be happy to help if you need any pcb layout advice! a keyboard shouldn't be too picky about stuff
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re: i'm building a keyboard from scratch 

@Felthry ooh sure!! i appreciate the help!

the main thing that concerns me rn is like, how much would a one-off PCB cost, and can i get it assembled (which in this case would just be 1 SMD diode per switch)

re: i'm building a keyboard from scratch 

@astra We've never had one assembled for us, we just design the things to be easy to solder by hand and do it ourselves

and there are PCB fabs that get cost down super low by batch processing tons of people's orders at once, we've used pcbway before and they make good pcbs for cheap
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re: i'm building a keyboard from scratch 

@Felthry perfect, thank you!

i could do thru-hole diodes easily, but it seems like it would get crowded. i'll know more after i get further into this!

re: i'm building a keyboard from scratch 

@astra Some surface-mount diodes are easily hand-soldered too! SMA and SMB are particularly easy
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