Macropad 6-14-26 Devlog

During the course of this project, I’ve been spending a significant amount of time re-iterating my case and PCB design. One of my goals for this project is to have the nicest looking front appearance. This means that there should be no visible screws, and the top should be smooth. I plan to do this by having the screws screw in from the bottom, with the heat inserts on the top plate. Initially, I was planning to have the screws go through the PCB. However, I would’ve had to make an indentation by the keys in order to fit the inserts. Instead, I decided to redesign so that the screws don’t travel through the PCB. I was able to finish half of the top plate and the bottom cover. So far, it seems like it’ll work well.

The image below shows a section view of the case and PCB assembled.

MacroPad 6-12-26 Devlog

Today, I made major progress. I thought of a better way to add backlights. Also, I realized that since I have a 4x2 matrix, I can add up to 7 keys and one rotary encoder. So, I redesigned the whole PCB completely re-did routing. During the redesign process, I accidentally mounted the MINI-E RGB LEDs on the wrong side of the board. So I flipped them and re-routed. After that, I finalized the positions of the microcontroller and mounting holes. I also started working on the assembly in CAD.

Finished MacroPad PCB redesign to add backlights!

I just realized that I haven’t been doing anything with the two LEDs that I had in my earlier iterations. They can’t even be used as indicator lights since they’re both wired to the same control pin. Instead, I decided to use 7 LEDs as backlights. It was so difficult trying to route all of them, but I pulled it off. Hopefully this won’t be impossible to solder 🙏

MacroPad Initial CAD and finalizing PCB

This session, I decided to make a rudimentary CAD assembly of all the parts on the PCB. I also fine tuned the position of some components on the PCB, like the location of the microcontroller. Next session, I’ll finish up the main case and make it look nicer.

Just finished designing my macropad PCB!

This was my first time designing a PCB. It was quite tricky at first, but after I understood the tools a bit better, it was actually very intuitive! Tomorrow, I’ll move on to CADding the case.

Finished my first schematic!

It took me a while, but I used the example schematics and designs in the Hackpad Guide to learn how to use KiCAD. I decided to go with a similar design to the example hackpad, but with two extra keys. Hopefully, once I finish designing it, it will have two RGB LEDs, an OLED display, six keys, and a rotary encoder. 😁