Making a custom keyboard.
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Thanks & important links
I would like to give credit to the following people for inspiring & enabling this project to be done with incredible ease thanks to very well-made guides:
The first video about the ferris keyboard: Ben Vallack This was particularly helpful using KiCad with editing the silkscreen on the pcb to personalise it which is very nice.
This is the video that was the most helpful with actually putting the whole keyboard together Kyek with thinks like soldering the TRRS, microcontroller & switches to the board.
What is the ferris keyboard?
The ferris keyboard is a minimalistic keyboard that contains only 34 keys for ease-of-use and comfort as the lower number of keys will mean that you don’t have to move your fingers across as wide of a space (two or more keys) to hit a desired key which can improve the overall experience in typing. However, because of a reduced number of keys the ferris has it need to utilize layers in order to be able to be used an actual keyboard -> buttons like: ctrl, shift, caps-lock, tab, esc…
Ordering the parts
Ordering the parts was a pretty simple process,
Creating the ferris keyboard
The process of editing and uploading the file of the PCB is very simple: I would like to give credit to — dude’s name here - for a very good video about the ferris keyboard & how to create one from scratch.
My keyboard
Because of the extensive documentation about most custom keyboards using QMK the ordering of the PCB & other parts such as the ARRS & keys as well as keycaps was made much easier. I made a mistake when ordering the micro-controllers because I ordered some that did not have usb functionality which meant I had to order some new ones in order for the firmware to be flashed and the keyboard to work appropriately.