moving the zif connector and OnShape issues

we’re not sqishing the cable anymore

Soooo i realised, that when assembling the whole thing, the fpc connector would only have like 1,5mm of space under the panel and that is WAAAY to little for it to not break so i had to lay it flat on the pcb and move the zif connector behind the mcu pins.

time for some bad news

When i tried to import the new board design into onshape for assembly, it spewed out an error that the step file coud not be translated. I thought to myself - fine just try again. Same thing happened so i started troubleshooting:
-gaps in edge-cuts? No
-corrupted models? Nope
-weird design? Nu uh, tried to import a plain rectangle and nothing changed.
-Kicad issues? Wrong, dropped a 3d model from a website, still couldn’t translate
The worst thing about it was that it wasn’t just the .step format that could not be translated by onshape. I tried stl, 3mf, gbl - the result was still the same. I ran out of ideas so i decided to switch to a different cad program (onshape failed to export the existing models too, so my work there is unaccesable now. Thanks ig) and face my worst fear - Autodesk Fusion. I hate this software for the dephts of my pure soul. this program is REALLY overengineered for me and my skills and all the tools, mechanics and functions are too complicated for me to handle and end up working against me and themselves. I had to redo all of the plates inside a program which I despise. I was so frustrated i forgot to log some hours. After a long work session I managed to finish them. You can see the results of my hard work below. Oh and we hit the 20 hour mark with this one!

PCBA IS TOO EXPENSIVE

I looked over the pcb assembly costs and boy were they high. So high in fact, that it exceeds the max funding for the tier hayai falls into. to reduce assembly costs, i decided to use a microcontroller module instead of the chip. I used a rp2350 zero from waveshare and rerouted the whole board (and also expanded the borders a bit). Im a bit frustrated about the whole thing bescause the project was like 99% ready to submit and now i gotta do so many things all over again but it is what it is.

Added mounting holes

i decided on a system where 4 holes will be occupied by screws attached from both sides to a female to female spacer, and the other 4 by dowel pins to prevent the plates from wobbling sideways. i’ll adjust the hole sizes later when im ordering exact pins and screws

Case plates finished!

And with that, the whole project, i think. I took inspiration for the casing method from the sayo device with the pcb “sandwitched” between these plates. mine will be made from acrylic and im still thinking about priting some designs on top of the top plate and maybe making the bottom plate transparent but we’ll think about that later. Only thing left is some double checks, finishing up the repository and i think we’re ready to submit!
(btw i never told you but Hayai means swift in japanese :>)

PC crashed, lost my work :C

so unfortunaly my pc crashed and i lost almost all work on the pcb, wchich was weird bescause i could have sworn i’ve been saving my progress regurarly. But we don’t cry over spilled milk do we? I started over and made the pcb again it was easier as i just needed to redo it from memory. still have some silkscreen art to do tho.

I fancy an upgrade, so lets start over

After some thought, i decided to upgrade the regular mechanical switches
to hall effect magnetic ones. That of course requires them to be hooked
up to analog pins. But I already wired everything and stuff and the adc pins are on the opposite side of the board so it would really be a mess dragging them all the way so i decided to start over and redo the pcb. I also made a custom footprint for the switches i wanna use (the gateron magnetic jade Air HE’s).

Schematic and initial pcb design

After some trial, error and deviously long time looking for the right ips panel (asking guys on reddit came in handy as always) I completed the schematic and the initial pcb design.
As for the parts i suppose they will remain unchanged but im sure the arrangement of them on the board will as i move on to designing the case for it, especially the ips panel bescause i just put it somewhere in the middle without a care in the world :P. I had to make my own footprint and symbol for the 8pin 0,5mm pich ZIF connector (i did not find any online :cc ) but at least now i know how to make these right? Arranging everything on the board is fairly easy given the space i have. Seriously - running a straight trace across the whole board has never been more refreshing after doing a pi pico devboard project!

The firmware is (almost) completed! I decided to ditch some ideas i had earlier as it turned out im not advanced enough to apply them yet lol. so for the keymaps, I decided to set the bottom 3 keys to controll music and the top 3 to act as a discord mic mute, and the delete key (i still haven’t decided on the funtion of the last one) I intentionally left the oled firmware unpolished yet, although it works, bescause i’d rather do it when i got the pad assembled and am able to test it’s functions rather than blind guess if it would work.

I’ve desided to make some changes in the pcb. I realised, that moving the mcu to the back created a lot of free space that allowed me to change the oled to a 30x128 and move it closer to the center, which made the pcb thinner. I adjusted the case too and i think it looks much cleaner now. So the pcb and the case are all finished now. On to the next part wchich is code. I’ll be using the qmk firmware for that, propably.😁😁

Quick log. I moved the mcu to the back of the board so it fits in the case. I had trouble shaping the edges of the case so i arranged the screwholes in this pattern below. I’m propably going to change it anyway, maybe just move them to the bottom and have a plate attach there (it will be harder to solder it that way but im willing to let that slide).

Today I spent my time designing the case for my macropad. I got the main shape right, but it still needs some touchups before i submit the project. i narrowed the width of the pcb just a tiny bit as i realised it was taking mesurements wrong and the switches would be off to the left so its 67,3 by 68,4 mm now. I gotta say, the proccess designing that case was gruesome😵‍💫. at first i tried using Autodesk Fusion but i soon realised it was like using a jackhammer to drive a nail so i switched do Shapr3D😅. It made things a bit easier to understand, but still, it was my first time using a 3D software so i had to learn all the basics first. i also had some problems with the keyboard plate generator as i didn’t know how to set the plate’s dimensions to my preferences so i just made my own plate. that took some time taking all the mesurements but i think it was worth it. i still need to polish some things like chamfer the edges, maybe add some designs and make it a bit less blocky overall.

Today i made all of the needed pcb schematics! I changed my mind on the amout of switches i wanna use, so i removed the bottom row-now its a 2x3 macropad lol. I also added a ground plane instead of routing everything to ground individually which proved to be really easy and effective. I had some problems with the schematic editor. it was constantly crashing when i copied or pasted my components but i eventually got there. when i finish designing the case i think i’ll be ready to submit the project. This may prove to be difficult tho, as i have never used autodesk fushion before😭 Wish me luck!