Starting Small

31 Aug 2021

A little while ago, I decided I wanted to try something different. After a bit of reading around and practice, I got to the first concrete result last week:

MBUK Macro Pad with assorted switches

What you’re looking at is:

  • An MBUK Macro Pad kit from Mechboards UK
  • A Pro Micro controller
  • A taster menu of switches:
    • Gateron Ink Silent Black
    • Gateron Brown
    • Kalih Speed Copper
    • Durock T1 Tactile 67g Teal
  • The tweezers I use to short the reset pins to flash the firmware

A small start, but I’m pretty pleased with it as it served its main purpose — proving that I can solder this kind of thing without trashing it, and thus giving me the confidence to move on to something more ambitious.

So, will I actually move on to such a thing, or has this project sated my desire to tinker? Suffice to say that the parts for my first full1 keyboard are already on their way, and I’m idly speculating about ideas for the one after that. I think this will keep me going for a while.

  1. “Full” as in “a replacement for a normal keyboard”, rather than having 100-something keys. [back]

This site is maintained by me, Rob Hague. The opinions here are my own, and not those of my employer or anyone else. You can mail me at rob@rho.org.uk, and I'm @robhague@mas.to on Mastodon and robhague on Twitter. The site has a full-text RSS feed if you're so inclined.

Body text is set in Georgia or the nearest equivalent. Headings and other non-body text is set in Cooper Hewitt Light. The latter is © 2014 Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and used under the SIL Open Font License.

All content © Rob Hague 2002-2024, except where otherwise noted.