Hi everybody! I'm Spiwocoal

Hi, I’m Spiwocoal. I’ve been a lurker in the custom mechanical keyboard communities (mostly Reddit) for a year or two. I still don’t have a mechanical keyboard because my budget hasn’t allowed me to buy one and I have other priorities like upgrading my PC (TLDR: I’m stuck with membrane keyboard :sob:).
I am from Chile and currently coursing high school. I hope on becoming an Electronics Engineer because I really like designing circuits and stuff. In fact, I am working in a custom keyboard PCB that would be modular and you could attach different modules to a main board like a Numpad, a Macropad, etc… The PCB is mostly done, I just have to order the pieces and test the circuit in a breadboard to see if everything works correctly. I also need to find how the modules would connect to the main board so if someone has an idea on how to achieve it, it would be really helpful :wink:.
Anyways, I’ll be posting updates on the keyboard here if anyone is interested.

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Hi, welcome. If you need any help (or have questions about the profession) I’m an electrical engineer and am always willing to have a look at schematics or answer questions.

USB-C would be my pick for connector, but the UX would be bad if you didn’t implement a hub so any usb device could be plugged in, maybe something magnetic would be cool?

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Thank you :smile:! The schematics part is practically done, mostly thanks to the awesome guide by ruiquimao, so no help needed there.
My idea for the communication between the modules was to use I2C. The main board, which is basically a normal 60% board, would have an ATmega32U4 and it would connect via an I2C bus to the extra modules that would each have a MCP23017 I2C GPIO Expander.
I thought of using magnetic connectors, but I couldn’t find any connector that convinced me. Perhaps I could make my own connectors, but I’m not sure how that would turn out :confused:.

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Hey man! Take it slowly and be patient :wink: and you’ll finally get your dream one! Good luck and welcome!

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Welcome!
I also read this ruiquimao guide and it was very usefull to get started.
AIO3 also has a very well made guide.
And Gondolidrim also shares all its PCB designs through its open source Acheron project.

Good Luck with your PCB design :wink:

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Thank you!
Didn’t know about those other two, I’ll check them and see if I can improve my design! :grin: