Achievement unlocked: First PCB built

The bag was very hard to undo, but worth it

A parcel arrived from PCBWay today. These are the boards that I designed last week. They turned them round in double quick time and they look great.

These are the key positions for right handed use

I lost no time soldering the key sockets into place and getting a test program into the PICO. I have made a few mistakes with this board. The key spacing is a tiny bit close. I had to file a bit off a couple of keytops to make them move smoothly. The next version will have the keys a mm or so further apart.

It is traditional that your first board needs a fix or two….

I’d also made a mistake with one of the OLD display sockets, reversing the clock and data lines. But I managed to fix that and get the board going with some Python code. The good news is that the left handed versions is wired perfectly. I’m going to build one of those too just to see if it is easy to learn to use the keyboard with your left hand. Now I have to write the C++ code to read the keys and send the keypresses over Bluetooth.

Ordered my PCBs - another easy job

Another job this week that turned out much, much easier than I expected was getting the PCBs ordered for the Bluetooth chord keyboard I’m making.

When I made the original chord keyboard PCBWay reached out to me with an offer of a sponsorship of my next board, which I’ve only just taken them up on. I added the PCBWay plugin to KiCad and ran it to see what happens. What happens is that all your design files get sent to PCBWay, their site opens up and within a few seconds you have a price for the job. All I ended up having to pay was for quick delivery - because I’m an impatient sort. The boards arrive next week and I’m rather excited about this. It turns out that getting a custom PCB made is affordable and easy. I can see me using this service a lot in the future. And I’d really like to have a go at having a PCB made and populated.

The latest version of KiCad lets you put artwork and text on your PCB. I really think everyone should have a go at making their own boards. You might not put much circuitry on it, but you could make it look very pretty.