Hi everyone, i’m new to this forum and to the hobby as well
Nice to meet ya’ll.
I just got my first keeb (68 keys) and ordered a set of keycaps too, but now I’d like to look into getting a numpad/macro pad and I really like the idea of having a rotary encoder to scroll, zoom, adjust volume, and also for adjusting rgb colours on photoshop.
My question is, how easy would it be for me to buy a numpad kit (assembled), then take off one of the keys and replace it with a rotary? Or is there a vendor/ maker who can build it for me?
I spent about just 20mins looking into this and understand that it might involve me learning up how to do this myself, but before i launch into this project, I’d like to know if there is an easier way to do this. Thanks in advance for sharing !
A key switch and a rotary encoder have very different pinouts, so you definitely can’t do this with a PCB that doesn’t already support a rotary encoder. The different pinouts are our of necessity (this is based on my assumption), the switch is either completing a circuit or not with its two pins. The encoder has a button press and can turn in two directions with more pins. I would recommend hiring somebody to make a kit like the BDN9 but soldering was also one of the easiest things I’ve ever learned.
Here is mine:
Thanks so much for sharing this, I have done a little soldering before so not too concern with this, more worried about the complexity of finding the right pcb as you pointed out and the mechanism of putting the rotary in + program it to get it to work. But I’ll start with BDN9 and see were that leads me (: Your numpad looks really nice bdw!
