Tom (the designer of the cheapino) sent me some parts to put together the keyboard after a few emails back and forth. The cheapino is a small, affordable 36 key split keyboard. It connects to the host via USB C and each half is connected with an RJ45 cable.
See photos of the build process (it was my first time soldering on a PCB, I had a cheap iron, and I didn't use flux, hence the messy solder joints):
The setup, cheap project mat, screw fix soldering iron and an Amazon soldering station. And of course some music while following the build guide.
Adding diodes
i didn't have "helping hands", so I just bent the legs to keep them in place while soldering. I tackled about 3 or 4 diodes at a time before clipping excess material from the legs and setting the scraps to the side.
Once the diodes were on I flipped the board over and got to work on the hotswap sockets.
after I finished these it was time for the MCU (RP2040), RJ45 sockets and rotary encoder to be soldered on.
I forgot to take pictures of the board during this time but you can check out the build guide if you want detailed photos.
The right side was complete after pressing the switches (otemu peach linear) into place.
After this I had to put the keyboard into flashing mode and flash the vial firmware into it.
after this the next step was deciding on a key map. By default the keyboard will be in QWERTY, but I fancied a challenge to learn a new layout, so I've went with Colemak mod DH. I added some temporary keycaps that i had lying around while i waited for new ones to arrive from AliExpress.
ill be using Keybr and monkey type to try to get up to 50-60wpm initially, after this I may consider a different keyboard with a few extra keys, or who knows... Maybe I'll stick with this one and print a case for it. No promises, but I may add an update here when I've perfected the key map, using layers will take some getting used to so there's no point in putting up the default here.
I found out about the Miryoku layout and decided to give it a go. I've made some modificatons to it and managed to make it work with the firmware compiled by tompi.
in order to get the "home row mods" working for me i added the following QMK>Tap Hold settings in Vial:
The base layer
The number layer
The navigation layer
The symbol layer
The function layer
The media/LED layer
The mouse emulation layer
I need to preface this part, my printer which is a second hand ender 5, isn't calibrated properly, and i'm too lazy to invest the time to do it.
With that out of the way, I printed tompi's case, and got some new keycaps, a magnetic USB cable and a nicer patch lead to connect the halves.
After printing the case top, you will see these holes on the inside.
I found using a pair of curved needle-nose pliers made this quite easy to do.
- Line up the threaded insert with pliers
- Push the insert into the hole with a hot soldering iron
- Remove the soldering iron when the insert is level with the top of the hole (sometimes the insert will be stuck on the iron, in this case, use the pliers to hold the insert in place when you remove the iron)
Repeat for all "holes"
Remove all the switches
Place the PCB inside the case
Flip it upside down
Note: i didn't use the case bottom, but if you did, set it in place at this point.
insert the screws through the case bottom if youre using it, if not, just screw them in through the screw holes in the PCB.
Once this is done, flip back over and refit the switches and keycaps. As i mentioned, my printer isn't callibrated very well, so pushing the switches in took a LOT of force, but they did go in, and as a bonus, this means my switches have zero wobble.
It looked like this once i got all the switches and keycaps installed.
Instead of using the case bottom, i just added some 3M dots as cusioning, and they work perfectly well for me.
Hey! You wouldn't happen to have a link to the grey cat5 cable in the first pic, would you?