Oh my days, I learned more about kicad than I ever learned about it than other videos

There's a far easier way to get the schematic to the PCB. In the PCB editor, top center, there's a button that says "Update PCB from schematic"

@MarcelRobitaille

3 күн бұрын

Beat me to it. It's also just F8

If you understand this video you can make PCBs already and don't need it. And if not - there is far too much stuff NOT covered here...

@CasualCodersOfficial

8 күн бұрын

For my own improvement, what else would you have liked to see explained?

@leonardab5042

6 күн бұрын

I have to agree. The level of detail esp. related to the schematic design is either not slow enough or too detailed to make it approachable for most viewers. I understand that you warned that the viewers should have basic understanding of electronics but it seems to me a deeper knowledge about circuit design is necessary here. Now, how could this be improved? Most keyboard enthusiasts that are brave enough to step beyond just buying a kit and assemble it, I believe still do not have enough knowledge about circuit design. However there are some tools that can help, but explanation is still limited. This is I think where you can fill the gap. For schematics, there is ergogen, and for components there are premade boards (eg. pro micro). Even with those things, I found that there is limited information to eg. to which pin should I connect the rows, columns, indicator leds, oled screen. Then how to assemble them (eg. how to make the IC board hot swappable, not just the key switch). Then after the components are all assembled in the pcb or handwired, what to do? How do we flash the qmk thing? etc I do really appreciate this video series though, I think you put a lot of effort there. 👍🏼

@violetbob694

6 күн бұрын

​@leonardab5042 totally second this. for me, the video is more supplementary to the knowledge I already know.

@posi_de

5 күн бұрын

@@CasualCodersOfficial I watched the video in expectation to see more about the micro-controller part as I lack knowledge around Atmega as HID. Making a PCB as you showed required quite some level of skills I would say - I can do it but I would not recommend this to anyone with only basic levels. Using Kicad and working with SMT parts looks too easy and beginners might tricked into buying a lot of stuff but ending up with an unfinished project. Many of us know how easy it is to screw up a footprint of a part and end up with a work around (in best case). Either the video should be long multi-part series with many hours of beginners friendly explanation of how to design PCB's and pick electronic parts (I think you don't aim for this) or the video should assume you already got these skills and express this assumption to the viewer. I hope you do not stop making content and really hope for part 3+ to see how the projects continues and if the boards gets a case?

@CasualCodersOfficial

5 күн бұрын

@@posi_de Everything above is super helpful. Regarding HID, I never touched that, as it's all software side and handled by the QMK Devs. I do believe I touched on the fact that this isn't something I'd recommend to a beginner in part 1: kzread.info/dash/bejne/e36s19yyf5zIaLA.html Though that was more than a year ago now.When I initially started this, I wasn't expecting it to take as long as it did. This video series definitely falls into the category pointed out by @violetbob694 where it's more supplementary and hopefully useful to provide a direction to refine further searches. I don't have the time nor the ability to create the needed 10 hour course to adequately explain every single aspect of board layout and design. I can try to add some further references to the description if that'd be beneficial though.

I was expecting to get some garbage again when youtube recommended me a video with 2K views but I was very wrong. I've thought about how hard it would be to make a fully custom ergonomics focused keyboard, since all the commercial ones are still extremely expensive to the point were making it custom probably isn't significantly more expensive. This explained stuff super well and made the subject seem much more approachable!

@CasualCodersOfficial

8 күн бұрын

Glad I could help clarify some things!

This absolutely makes PCBs seem way easier than i thought they were.

thanks for uploading it....some of us have been waiting for this for a year !!

Great video ! I hope to watch part 3 soon !

@CasualCodersOfficial

7 күн бұрын

I hope so too!

I've waited a year for this video lol. In the meantime, I made two hand wired keyboards using a RPi Pico as the microcontroller.

Awesome video! Also, really good kicad skills and tips. Looking forward for the next one.

@CasualCodersOfficial

7 күн бұрын

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!

Great guide, love that you stepped through and explained key combinations as you went through the whole process, bookmarking this for whenever I take the kicad dive from other paid softwares. Something you skipped over is setting trace widths, and you're using class defaults(though you did talk about it for the diff pairs). I would thicken all traces to switches, there's no reason to make them thin like high-speed data paths. If anything that little bit of extra trace capacitance, could help mitigate some switch debounce on occasion, but mostly for robustness. Also adding 'teardrops' features onto on all PTH and vias is a good thing to do as well, helps gradient the mechanical stress of hitting keys into a larger area so traces are less prone to hairline cracks developing right beside vias and large pad interconnects.

WHAT A TUTORIAL

19.05mm is exactly 3/4 inches.

Subbed with alerts. Thank you.

what he actually made part 2!

last time? You mean the vid you uploaded a year ago?

Great video again! Can you recommend any resources for larger switch matrix layouts? I want to make a full sized 109 key keyboard, plus some macro keys, but all the resources I've seen so far are for smaller 70%/80% boards. There's probably some clever way to handle the matrix where matrix columns cover multiple columns of keys of something, but without guidance I'll be reinventing the wheel.

@CasualCodersOfficial

6 күн бұрын

When I made my keyboard (128 keys), I solved this issue with the AT90USB1286. It's the biggest AVR MCU Atmel makes. It's got 48 GPIOs and runs at 5v. Alternatively, you could make use of one of the high pin count STM32s like the F103Rx, F103Vx, or F103Zx microcontrollers. Note that these are 3v3 logic and not 5v. Here are the design files for my keyboard. github.com/CasualCodersProjects/Keyboard

@buzz1ebee

6 күн бұрын

@@CasualCodersOfficial ah awesome! So you threw enough IO at the problem to fix it? I'll definitely check out those chips and files. That'll be a great help, thank you

@CasualCodersOfficial

5 күн бұрын

​@@buzz1ebee Is the 48 GPIOs of that IC not enough? You might also be able to do something with shift registers, but I fear that may cause significant latency on any keys downstream of it. I was going to ask about the ESP32-S3/S2, but those are only 45 GPIO at most. That said, I'm not 100% certain which of the NRF SoC's you intended to use. I expect the chip with 48 IOs is the BGA one.

Can you do a video about how to build pcb for beginners

@CasualCodersOfficial

6 күн бұрын

Digikey's got a nice tutorial that I used when I was first getting started. It is a bit dated now, but it's all generally still aplicable. kzread.info/dash/bejne/qJV3uMprg6TAiZc.html

how did you get dark mode lcsc?

@CasualCodersOfficial

7 күн бұрын

I know I already said this, but dark reader.

Can you try to make a mouse that will be awesome

@CasualCodersOfficial

7 күн бұрын

That would be really cool, but I'm afraid it's rather impractical. I lack the design skills to make the body, and the suppliers for mouse sensors have a minimum order quantity of like 10,000.

Ahh, a fellow fan of KDE.

@CasualCodersOfficial

6 күн бұрын

It's my favorite!

How to change Kicad GUI to dark mode

@CasualCodersOfficial

7 күн бұрын

Use a dark theme for the schematic editor. You can find them in the plugin manager.

Eagle is better than kicad. has the autorouting which kicad clone does not have.

@CasualCodersOfficial

4 күн бұрын

I've never used eagle, but Eagle is now an autodesk product and costs $680 per year. I won't be using it. In addition, Kicad added some small auto-complete features in release version 7.0.0: www.kicad.org/blog/2023/02/Version-7.0.0-Released

@monkev1199

4 күн бұрын

I'd argue that an auto router would give worse results than routing by hand. Especially without loads of routing rules that could take a day or two to do.