It’s painful, but you can actually get taobao shipping to the US without a proxy. You basically pay for the item and the shipping is a few dollars, they ship it to a warehouse, and then you pay a bit more to have them ship it to the US. A proxy might be faster, it usually takes a while. There’s a guide on /r/mm and between that and google translate it’s doable. I’ve also found guides on the anime figurines subreddit. I’ve done it myself a few times successfully.
As for the controller itself, I know nothing about it
Bluetooth and programmable, they are all made by Yang, the BT hhkb controllers from Kbdfans are made by him, and they did a lot of pcb’s and boards : http://ydkb.io/
I now see in the keyboards list that he did one for fc980m too, so that’s an awesome one right there, just get a fc980m pd with awesome keycaps, add BT&programabillity and maybe your preffered switches, but I feel you can do an endgame keyboard with only 250$-300$, keycaps included
I got my hands on the BLE980m module. It’s pretty interesting. The creator made his own YMK to help flash changes to it. I added my own 2500mah battery and it’s with a 40hr work week it last about a month.
It’s now available (ONLY the 980m) on aliexpress too! Way easier than using taobao and a proxy.
How much should the 660C or 980M controllers cost? I’m looking at them on Aliexpress for about $80-90; is this a good price or do they come down cheaper?
I think that’s about right. I just picked one up from Ali. They are listed on taobao for $55ish, but the only shipping option was listed at about $200. Superbuy could ship them, but all accounts are it will still come out around 80-90$, it just might be shipped DHL.
yep, thats the PCB i’m thinking of making BT capable. and no, i don’t have a proxy atm. id join someone’s US group buy if they do it.
so i looked at the guide on Ali and it’s saying i have to do a cable switch on the connector for the battery. has anyone done the controller for the 980–im planning to eventually put the whole thing in a Heavy-9. so id have to source a lipo battery in the US, do something to the cable, affix it into the case either the plastic one or the Heavy-9–am i missing anything else?
I have an Adafruit feather nRF52. I am hoping to make it act like a generic HID pass through device. So keyboard USB signal could be passed over BT and the feather would be buried in the keyboard with a battery. That is the theory at least
I’m all for this, someone started doing something similar in r/OLKB. While dongles or HID passthrough is not my preferred outcome, I want any modicum of wireless capability to come to keyboards.