Updates

Assembled without the case as a sort of firmware dev board, everything works. Going to get some price quotes for the large batch now.

It works! This update is a bit short but I'll add more info and pictures soon.

Good news, the writer looks and feels wonderful when assembled. Bad news, I've encountered a series of problems with this PCB. Right off the bat, it seemed like there was no bootloader that should have been already programmed to the microcontroller. Then when I went to try putting on the bootloader myself, the whole device was never detected at all. Turns out there was a missing fuse intended to protect the board from a bad USB port or any similar shorts. It was listed in the PCB files that were sent but not placed on the board. Not a huge deal...

I have my bulk materials and the current stop is the lead time on the PCBs' arrival. The minimum quantity for PCBs I could feasibly pick was 5 and the lead time on the PCBs is nearly a month. This means that, assuming the PCB works fine, the first 5 orders for the keyboard are going to be sent out earlier. The last order that fits within this window is #1066. Fingers crossed that everything on the case fits together with the PCB and the keyboard works smoothly!

Holiday family obligations are all done and finishing up the final details for the PCB is well underway. It is mainly small bits left like trying to figure out how to fit in all the pins for the interconnect cable between the pads for the keyswitches as compactly as possible without overlapping. Ordering enough PCBs for 100 writers is something I realized I cannot afford eating the risk of messing up. I think instead of going directly from the raw breadboard test to ordering the full batch of finished PCBs (to bring the keyboards out absolutely as fast as possible), just...