Unfinished Projects: What's blocking them?

XTaran · April 17, 2020, 12:52am

Funnily the opposite happened to me these days:

A parcel from WorldspawnsKeebs with three sub-40% kits arrived on Thursday last week just in time for the Easter weekend. Built all three kits it contained (Pain27, Jerkin and Reviung39) over the long weekend and even started and finished my brass JD40 yesterday since I am currently not in home office but on home holidays (sic).

Some potato shots in order of completion:

Pain27 with MDA Big Bone

Features Millmax hotswap sockets and Durock T1 switches.

I really like how MDA key caps look on it. Nevertheless thinking if I should put SA Vilebloom on instead for some color without any modifiers. Will probably try once round 1.5 arrives.

Also might replace the T1 switches probably with some 30 leftover Zealios which I nearly can’t use elsewhere.

Reviung39 with SA 1976 ortho kit

Features Millmax hotswap sockets and Kailh Box Jades.

Still thinking if I should order a SA Vilebloom Ergodox kit for it (though misses the yellow 1u keys which I would need two ortho kits for ) as I like its colors more. And once SA Jadeite is out and shipped, it will likely receive that key cap set anyways.

Brass JD40 with MT3 Godspeed (Ares/Solar colorway)

Got it from 1upkeyboards.com a few months ago while it was on sale for nearly 50% of. (Seems sold out now, just the steel and carbon variants are still available and still on sale. ) I kinda like the combination of this vintage looking key cap profile, kinda vintage colors and the rather technical and simple looking brass case.

On purpose (and because I’m lazy ) I did not try to conserve the brass. I’m really curious if and how it will gain patina over time and how that changes the look.

Currently features Millmax hotswap sockets and Zilents v2 67g.

Will though probably swap the Zilents against some Kailh Box Navies since I want these heavier Zilents in my MiniVan daily driver which currently has 62g Zilents v2.

Jerkin with SA Laser

It’s the keyboard shown in the lower half of the picture. The keyboard in the upper half is my Alpha28 with GMK Mitolet for size and color comparison; for some reason I thought in the past that the Mitolet and Laser colors are way more similar.

The Jerkin features Millmax hotswap sockets and Zealios v2. (The Alpha28 has soldered Kailh Box Royals.)

The Jerkin wasn’t finished until today as some of the included screws for the case were too short, and the replacement screws (as well as SA Laser) arrived only today. Nevertheless I’m thinking about getting black screws instead of the silver ones seen in the pictures.

Conclusion

So in the end, despite I kinda finished more projects than were incoming these days (if you don’t count key cap sets as projects ), I still have four projects which are planned for modifications. (With which we are back at the posting’s original topic. Never ending story… )

ddrfraser1 · April 17, 2020, 1:47pm

I need to get around to converting my pingmaster… but I got the lazies…

XTaran · April 17, 2020, 6:38pm

Just built that BM43a today, kinda as a “cheap and orange” themed keyboard, with completely orange colored, but rather crappy, wobbly and not that clicky “TTC Orange Blue Clicky” switches (what a name! ) and" JTK Orange on Black CS:GO" (aka “JTK Charred Orange”) as key cap set.

Tried to at least keep the profile proper, but that didn’t work out for the Enter key being used as Spacebar and the Menu key being used as Tab. And of course the left 0/Ins is a Shift key and the bottom right one is the Menu key, The two Star keys are Ctrl and Alt and the Anchor key is the OS key And the only Shift key is actually a SpaceFn while Enter is a pure space key.

The only not cheap parts in this build are the Millmax sockets I soldered in.

So here are two potato shots, the first outside during a cloudy sunset:

Here actually the anodization even looks like an orange color and seems not that far away from the keycap set’s orange.

And the other shot is indoors with warm-white LED lighting (same mobile phone camera and both times no flash):

Here the case IMHO looks rather like a cold gold and not really orange, with a big difference to the key cap set’s orange.

So it’s not as bad as I remembered it when writing this posting initially, but I still think the case color and the keycaps don’t really fit together colorwise as I usually use keyboards indoors…

And the BM43a’s quite unique R3 to R4 offset of 0.75u is also way more awkward and annoying than I expected. I’m probably to much more used to uniform stagger (via Zlant and UT47.2) whose R3 to R4 offset is also a 0.25u off compared to standard stagger, but in the opposite direction, i.e. just a 0.25u offset between those two rows.

I’m also annoyed by the position of the .> key and wonder of I should rather use a cursor key layout like this:

alternative-cursor-cross

Looks ugly, but is actually quite usable. I use a similar layout on the second layer of all my 60% keyboards without dedicated cursor keys: Fn-Menu and Fn-Control are left and right and Fn-Enter and Fn-Shift are Up and Down. Especially my daily driver at work, a Tex Yoda II has this style of cursor keys. (Yeah, I’m no vi user and I’m no fan of HJKL, )

Addendum: Just noticed that despite the BM43a is 0.75u less wide than my MiniVan Catalyst with aluminium case (12u vs 12,75u), it is remarkably heavier. Probably because of that chamfering on the upper side of the case.

dwarflemur · April 17, 2020, 6:51pm

I’m sorry, but that CS:GO enter key is hilariously bad lmaoooo. That’s a pretty good looking build overall though. I think I put right shift to the right of the up arrow since that’s where I expect it…

XTaran · April 17, 2020, 7:22pm

No need to be sorry. Yeah, that key cap (and a bunch of CS:GO themed full-size spacebars in that set) are hilarious and IMHO only can be used in an ironic sense. (I don’t even really know that game. ) I also could’ve used the normal Enter which is also included in the set, but this key cap just cried for being used in such a not-that-serious build.

I though suspect that the key cap set is actually targeted towards gamers who play that game and want their LAN party keyboard to be properly themed… I bought that key cap set, because I dig orange and it wasn’t that expensive. As I mentioned, it’s a rather cheap-themed build,

I also could’ve used GMK SkIIdata (which was about triple the price of the CS:GO keycap set), but that’s reserved for some more serious builds like the Kira80.

Thanks! Was done in an afternoon (I’m currently on Home Holidays…) and most work was soldering in the Millmax hotswap sockets—also because the pin holes of the BM43a PCB were rather tight and a few times dangerously close to some SMD components.

Ah, right, I remember: you are a RShift user and I’m a LShift user. Makes sense that way.

XTaran · April 17, 2020, 10:39pm

And I forgot even one more unfinished project:

A naked (unpainted) black TKC 1800 with green plate. Got it for a bit less than normal when a bunch of them were up on Massdrop a year ago or so. Planned with GMK >Terminal_ R2 (hence the green plate).

Might become my next “home holidays” or weekend-during-COVID-19-lockdown build, but I just ran out of Millmax hotswap sockets, (Well, there are still enough left for another 40% build, but not for a full-size build.)

Additionally I run out of my favourite switches (Zealios, Zilents, Kailh Box Royal, Kailh Box Navy and Kailh Box Jades), Still have a bag of nice and orange Healios, so I might just use them initially although they’re planned them for some build with orange keycaps.

I ordered some more Zealios and Zilents at Massdrop’s leftovers shop “Yanbo’s Closet” about two or three weeks ago, but they’re not yet even shipped, probably due to COVID-19…

Just was reminded of it over in the “What is on your desk today?” thread…

Will add this and the also missing Ginny kit to the main posting for completeness.

Manofinterests · July 28, 2020, 6:02pm

Well I’m finally making progress:

Leaf60: Ordered my Alps plate. Once it arrives I can build it up with brown alps.

SI 60%: Just need to lube the space invader switches then they’ll be “done”. Thankfully I don’t need to desolder in order to lube.

VIA Rebuild: Just laziness now. Going to use silk switches. I need to desolder, and rebuild it with a cooler PCB too!

LZ Physix: Big laziness here from me. I need to lube and film my NK Dry yellow switches before building up this fun one.

FR87: I need to lube the T1 switches inside. At least the whole plate/board won’t require me to desolder with the switch top removal plate/half plate.

CA66: I need to get a new plate made to try something out. Then I’ll probably go with some silk switches instead of jades Alternative option is NK Blueberries

ddrfraser1 · July 28, 2020, 6:06pm

The need for a workbench haha

Solved

dwarflemur · July 28, 2020, 6:22pm

I was trying to desolder switches I don’t like from my Alf X3 and didn’t notice the tip was ****ed up on my desoldering gun and pulling pads off the board. So now I’m missing five or six pads and am going to have to patch it up with lil wires…

ddrfraser1 · July 28, 2020, 6:39pm

Oh yeah, that’s a pain in the ass. I used to mess up pads a lot when I was first getting started. Glad I learned about switch bridges.

It’s funny how many things you can F up in this hobby but somehow still manage to make it work in the end.

cough my F AT spacebar

Still haven’t fixed it after a year because anger reasons…

dwarflemur · July 28, 2020, 6:42pm

oof. Yeah I frickin hate desoldering shit, pain in my butt. I didn’t think I used the desoldering gun that much but I guess the tips don’t last that long

ddrfraser1 · July 28, 2020, 6:49pm

Yep. I’ve desoldered many full size boards, several of which were full RBG. Needless to say, I got real good at it real fast.

dwarflemur · July 28, 2020, 7:01pm

jeez full size board sounds not fun. I end up doing quite a lot of soldering for my job, I can do surface mount stuff no problem, microscope, no problem, even bga parts if I have to, but like almost nothing through hole. I hate doing through hole stuff…

givemeyourshoes · July 29, 2020, 7:03pm

I have four CFTKB DIY kits I need to build. The blocker - time. I’m home 24/7 with a 2 and 4 year old so I can’t just sit down for 6 hours and solder. I would work on them after they go to bed, but summer (being light out so late) has messed with their sleep cycles and they go to bed about the same time as the wife and I. I’m up at 5:30 am to run, then work and kids all over again. It’s gonna happen one of these days. Once daycare is a thing and I can take a day off work.

kimslawson · July 29, 2020, 8:01pm

I know how you feel! I have a YAS-62 I’d like to split the backspace on, and a NeXT non-adb board that I need to linearize (by taking out the click leaves, a time-consuming fiddly process — though easier with the ALPS switch opener! I’ve only gotten the nav cluster linearized, so far).

Between my kids, my work, and other demands of me it’s proving challenging to carve out the time or to justify the time for these things.

kinifi · July 29, 2020, 9:28pm

my gameboy cartridge MCU. I got pretty far on this project. Printed PCB’s that were in the Gameboy cartridge form factor and was able to plug them into a keyboard. I work on programs with custom bindings and sometimes I don’t have the appropriate keyboard at the time so plugging in your MCU was a no solder easy solution

Blocking
The connector that the cart plugs into is expensive. There are plenty of alternatives out there but sourcing the right one is the hard part. Also there needs to be support for when the cart plugs in so it stays there. I never got around to designing it

XTaran · July 30, 2020, 10:16am

Sounds like an interesting project. Thanks for sharing!

So what’s the idea behind this? What kind of functionality is on the cartridges that want to be pluggable in a keyboard? Switch from QMK to TMK quickly? Switch between different layouts quickly?

What do you consider expensive here? Do you want to build more than one of these keyboards which have that socket?

kinifi · July 30, 2020, 4:54pm

I thought of it like hotswappable keymapping. I work with multiple computers and multiple keyboards. If I could just unplug the cartridge and plug it into a new keyboard and have the same keybindings that would save me a lot of time.

Each Cart holds the MCU. The PCB that has the key switches on it does nothing other than Power and hold the switches. A socket for the Cart will allow for the cart to plugin.

I made an adapter for pro micro based keyboards along with planning on supporting all my keyboards in the future with it by having the footprint needed on the PCB and at checkout people can pick these carts and their adapter.

I found a company that makes different sizes for adapters. The expensive part is the adapter and the gold fingers for the PCB. When I say expensive I mean $3 for the adapter lol But considering the Atmega chip is less than $1, that is an expensive part.

I even designed but never made a keyboard that had 3 slots:

MCU
LED badge with programmable LEDs
USB Cart. Want USB-C? or USB-Mini? Just change the USB cart.

No soldering

ajoflo · June 1, 2021, 6:26pm

Old post, but how did the ADK64 workout for you? I see them as an in stock item now with a 5 week lead time. Not bad. Optional center poll too, classy.

Rob27shred · June 1, 2021, 9:13pm

Pretty good actually! I got mine without the center pole & haven’t had any issues with it. I’ve swapped the build in it numerous times too. I’d definitely recommend one for a decent 3D printed case. The finish leaves a little to be desired (seems to be the case with any 3D printed case I’ve had TBH), but you can sand & fill the material it is made from if you want to.