Keyboard – The Louie

After three [1, 2, 3] Ursa inspired keyboards it was time to try to do something different. For a while now I've seen several keyboards inspired by the original C64 design and colours, but I wasn't a Commodore guy, I had an Atari STe when I was a kid. The first ideas and sketches started to form properly around the start of the year, but it would take until the start of the summer before I had something to type on. I started with trying to get the characteristic F-buttons of the Atari ST to work. [...]

After my second Ursa inspired keyboard was finished and I wasn't completely satisfied with the bulky look I decided to leave fabric and go back to a material I've worked with a bit more, wood. Also my newest PCBs had arrived a while back and I was eager to use them. I've also gotten some LOTR themed keycaps, more specifically the dwarvish set from Drop. So I started on the third iteration of the original design idea form Andreas Chlupka. Main body So I started with getting some oak planks and [...]

After the immeasurable success with the first case and the fact that I have computers both at home and work, and can't be bothered to transport a keyboard back and forth I decided to create one more. Since I had more Lou1:e PCBs and just got a new keycap set it was a natural choice to just continue working on modifying Andreas Chlupkas original design. The final result I did like the look and feel of fabric on the keyboard but wanted it a bit more fluffy, and I wanted to colour match the the case [...]

After I've used my Lou1:e PCBs a while and I had some ideas for a PCB that was more suited for experimenting with crazy designs I started thinking about creating a new version. After talking to the user 4pplet on the Mechanical Keyboard Sweden discord I decided that STM32 had just what I wanted, a lot of extra IO pins and a somewhat beefy processor. I ended up using the STM32F072 since it requires very few external components, it even has a built-in oscillator. Version 1.0 of the PCB With all those [...]

After my failure with Lou:1c – my first keyboard and after the new PCBs arrived I started with a case to go with the PCB. Design inspiration I started designing several versions, and even halfway built some before I finally saw an image in a Discord channel. The image had no attribution but there was a name on the keyboard itself that pointed me towards Project Ursa, a project to create a keycap with "a deep dish spherical touch area with a flat top edge" by Andreas Chlupka. You can view more of [...]

After I received my new PCBs I wanted to get a feel for them and start using them as fast as possible. So I grabbed a 22mm thick sheet of MDF from the stack and started cutting in to it. For the tray to have a bit more strength I soaked it was watered down wood glue a couple of times before I painted it black. The result wasn't amazing, or above average. But it at least let me start using my new nice pcb and keycaps while I created the first proper case. [...]

After the failure and lessons learned with the design and production of Lou1:d I didn't give up. And started working on Lou1:e. I decided to skip the extra column of switches to the left, my idea was that I could keep the wirings and add solder points for an external 5 row 1 column PCB if I wanted (spoiler: i didn't do it). Also I wanted to use more common key switches so I created a new footprint that allows for both MX and Choc v1 and v2 key switches. It also has a cutout for reverse mount RGB [...]

While designing my own PCB I created some prototypes. To test my designs and the capabilities of JLCPCB. I wanted to test the newly created footprints, colours and silk-screen prints among other things. So here are a small gallery of those prototypes. The first, mainly footprint test The 2nd & 3rd, more footprints The 4th, different sized holes The fifth, more footprints, RGB and misc shenanigans [...]

After trying hand-wiring i decided that I wanted to try to make a custom PCB. This would be the first that was a bit more advanced, with a MCU and USB. I also wanted a PCB for the vintage SMK switches I just bought from Ebay. SMK gen2 switches I used EasyEDA to design it since i would be ordering from JLCPCB and there is a nice integration between EasyEDA and JLCPCB which made the ordering a lot easier. Screenshot from EasyEDA, v1.5 of the PCB I created my own footprint for the key switches and [...]

Somewhere late 2019 me and my friend discovered that the Makerspace here in Jönköping had laser cutter. Someone had lended it to the space for a indefinite time and we started to get in in order right away. Our goal was to cut parts for keyboards, we had both started looking into custom built mechanical keyboards and a laser cutter would be an awesome tool to have. The laser cutter in the back. Unfortunately we had quite mixed experience with the cutter, sometimes it would cut our material like [...]