After some more discussion and deliberation, the main keyboard PCB has been sent out for manufacturing and assembly. The PCB manufacturer that has been chosen is JLCPCB, since they promised less delays during the Chinese New Year holiday season. One thing that needed to be changed in the design is that a proper FPC Connector SMT footprint was added to the board instead of the through holes of the previous design.
As part of the order, all the components were to be assembled onto the PCB, however we soon realized that we were missing a vital piece which could not be found online anywhere. Due to the worldwide chip shortage, the stm32F401RETX mcu was unavailable for purchase. This was solved by replacing this chip with the stm32F412RETx, which has the same pinout and similar feature set, and could be found online for purchase.
For the keycap PCB, heavy redesign was completed in order to optimize routing and component placement, as well as to minimize unsafe/risky design choices. The PCB will be sent in for manufacturing through NextPCB, since they are capable of manufacturing blind vias. A blind via connects an outer layer to one or more inner layers but does not go through the entire board, which is used throughout the design. For the keycap PCB, we will not pay for component assembly. Instead, all the necessary components have been sourced ourselves, and we will be doing the soldering.
In the meantime, while waiting for our PCBs to be manufactured and returned, we have begun on breadboarding the circuitry for the keycap PCB:
In the upcoming week, we will begin on writing some firmware for interfacing with the displays, as well as implementing some other basic logic for outputting character legends.
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