How to Make a Corne Split Keyboard // DIY

hi I'm Nathan maker and today I want to show you how I made these DIY corn split keyboards all right so I'm about to get started on making this side of the keyboard the first we're gonna do is work with these diodes they're incredibly small that's what the tweezers are for so we could pick them up and then put them into place so we have to put the diodes in these little areas right here that are marked off with the triangle on a line there's a little white line on each diode and that needs to correspond to the white line that's on the triangle where it's pointing because diodes only work in one direction so if we mess up we'll just have to flip them around later but we should be okay let's get started I like to just put a little bit of solder down on each one before I do it and then just put the diode into place after now these diodes are a little tricky to handle at first but once you get the hang of the first couple you'll start flying through them I want to make sure the diode is lined up in the right direction apply heat to one side place the diode apply heat to the other and make sure the diode has a solid connection between both pads and there you go you just got to do that 42 times and it's easy [Music] so now I have a complete board with all the Dow's necessary the next step is to add these hot-swap keyboard connectors and what these are gonna do is attach to the bottom of the switch and allow me to solder the connector to the board and not the switch which means whenever I need to change one of these I could just pull it out and put in a new one and not have to deal with unsoldering this and then resolder get after now these have a very similar install procedure if anything they're a little easier because they're bigger so I'm just gonna do a couple and then fast forward through the rest so we're gonna take these big pads over here add a little bit of solder and we're going to take these little pieces line them up so they're in this little whited out area and just heat up the solder push them through and that's it now what this is going to let us do is when the board is complete we can take our switch and just put it directly in like this and that's gonna hold all of our switches in place and when we want to put in a new switch or if this one breaks or something we can take it right back out that's instead of soldering this directly to the board where that would be much more difficult so let's do the rest of them [Music] so now we have the board all soldered up with the diodes and hot-swap components so now we can go to any key in here grab a key switch and throw it in just make sure it stays in like that and we'll go ahead and add in all those when we're done now the next step is to add our elite CE to the board and sort of do that by soldering on these leads and then soldering the leads to the board let's get started now these are gonna sit in here in the holes that are marked with the box I'm going to put those in put those in and then we're going to flip it over pushing those through while we're at it just so we make sure that they're all the way through I'll take our solder and we're going to solder them on the other side now if they get all bunched up you can just heat up all of it and reflow it to make sure you have a good connection down there yeah just like that we're getting to go on the bottom so we're gonna flip the board back over we'll take our elite CE and install it upside down to the pins match a little bit of fussing later and we'll do the exact same thing we just did on the bottom but on the top now look at that a couple minutes later and it's all soldered up all soldered along the bottom there and then it's all soldered along the top here again not the prettiest but it will do so the next step is to add this t RR s jack so this trrs jack will go right here and what this will do is basically run an audio jack audio cord from one side of the keyboard to the other so you'll notice here we've actually oh well I just started this on the wrong side of the board so when you're doing this make sure you solder your elite C or your probe micro on the opposite side of the board then the diodes and the hot-swap components this piece is supposed to be on this side so I'm gonna take a few minutes off-camera and I'll get that all sorted out alright so here we are off-camera I went through and I took the elite C off of this side and put it on the correct side I also actually went ahead and had of this trrs slot and this little LCD screen now the TRS is what that's going to do is connect both sides of their keyboard and so you're gonna have one plug on one side and one plug on the other and then they'll plug in and you'll have this split keyboard so you can have fingers typing on both sides so we'll show that in a little bit anyway the next step to do here is all the fun stuff so now it's time to assemble this board and just put all these switches and the caps and then put a little case on it so the next step is to go ahead and start putting the case together so we're gonna put all the key switches in here and then we're gonna attach that to the bottom plate and this will go underneath just like that alright so we're gonna take our plate and we're gonna start adding in all of our piece alright now that we have all of our key caps in place I'm just gonna take it over to the board and being very careful to make sure all the pins are going into the correct hole we're gonna select slightly start to apply pressure and make sure we're not bending any of these copper pins and then after going around being nice and gentle everything I'll start to line up get pushed into place and look at that you have all your keys ready to go and installed so now we're gonna go ahead and get the back plate and screw all of these on so we'll have a nice little container for our keyboard alright now that we have all the electronics finished it's just time to put on some key caps so I have a beautiful set of GMK dots that I've been waiting to put on my own custom keyboard it finally came in the mail and I'm gonna put them all on and nice little key cap that started out as an April Fool's joke because like the title it's just a whole bunch of dots and because I can program this map to any keys that I want it really doesn't matter that there aren't letters and symbols on top so I may have forgotten to mention I have some purple sums Elios Purple's on here and that's the switch of choice I'm going with for these keys decide to go with some nice ones for these nice key caps that I got going on all right now there you go one half of a corn keyboard and now all we have to do is program it decide which keys go where and make the other side tada now you may notice this one has a purple PCB and that's because it's from a different kit the case is also black but it shouldn't matter because a symmetry is in these days I also am probably gonna make a different custom case these ones are kind of bare but that'll be a future video so now back to these little cables right here these keyboards get connected with the TRS cord now go together then they'll be a USBC cord that will go from here to my computer and there you go a full corn keyboard now the cool thing about this one is that they're ortho linear so all the keys are going to be right on top of each other the other cool design about this is that each key is only one movement away from the last one so the farthest reach is only one out here this is from one one there and this provides for a nice ergonomic keyboard tapping experience I like to take this moment to thank my patrons for supporting me on this video not only do they provide me with the support to make new content they also provided some of the materials for this video so a big thank you to them and if you have any interest in supporting my channel or making other videos in the future go ahead and check out the link in the description and look at me over on patreon thank you so I'm super happy with how these turned out luckily I already used a split keyboard so this will be an easy adjustment in the future I may want to print or make a little custom case out of wood just so that this isn't sitting directly on the desk but for now this is a great keyboard thank you for watching I hope you learned a little bit about soldering and inspire to go make your own keyboard or other project if you look around this channel I have plenty of other videos and how I make a whole bunch of different stuff from sewing to room renovation where I made this room in general coming soon I have another bb-8 video where I make these custom battery packs alright see it

Channel: Nate the Maker

Views: 93,549

Keywords: keyboard, DIY, maker, corne, split, making, Nate the Maker, dots, keycaps, elite c, how to, mechanical keyboards, do it yourself, at home, PCB, kit, crkbd

Id: 2xmAIC0CmGM

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Sat May 16 2020