"How I Built My Own Keyboard" - Jesper

Hi Steemian, welcome to my corner!

Let me start by introducing you to Jesper, Jesper is the Founder of Money Test It - a free automated website testing for everyone.

Jesper became fascinated about the idea of building his own keyboard when he came across Let Split's Guide To Building A Let Split's Keyboard.

After doing a fair amount of research and comparing vendors, he settled on using a local supplier called MechBoardsUK.

To get started, you need to be prepared with some tools.

Must Have:

Soldering Iron, ideally with a fine tip
Solder, the thinner the better
Side Cutters for trimming pins and diodes

Nice to Have:

Solder vacuum/pump, it’s the IRL version of undo
Small screw driver for tightening the screws on the case
Adjustable helping hands to hold things in place
Needle nose pliers for bending diodes
Fan to blow away solder fumes.

Are the tools ready? Let's get started.

Step one is to mount the diodes.
Next, flip it over and solder them in from the back.
Now snip them off as close as you can to the board. I had to make two solder/snip passes as I couldn’t reach them all the first time.
Next up is the TRRS jacks. This will be the umbilical cord connection point between the two halves.

Next up is preparing the future home of our Pro Micro. First step is to attach the pins.
Now you’ll want to attach the first two switches. You’ll want to do that now, as the Pro Micro will be placed above the switch solder points.
Next, you’ll want to prepare the Pro Micro by flashing in.
One gotcha to keep in mind is that you’ll need to trigger a reset while flashing. This can be done easily enough by bending one of your diode clippings into a V shape, and shorting the spots marked GND and RST.

Once done, you’re ready to attach it to the PCB.

So what’s next?

Programming and customizing the QMK default keymap. There are a few community ones also available worth exploring as well.
Acquiring some LED strips to give a customizable under glow. It would be fun to turn it red if Jenkins starts failing, green if my company makes a sale, etc.

I’d recommend this project to anyone interested in getting into DIY computer hardware. It’s not too expensive, reasonably easy to assemble, and a fair amount of software involved for extra coding and customizability opportunities. Despite the simplicity, I have not tried it, I'm only sharing what I learnt from Jesper but I'll definitely try it soon.

I'm sorry for the poor formatting of the post, please bear with me i made use of my mobile phone.

Thanks for learning with me.