I Invented a Keyboard and Snapped it in Half (MiRage Mech Keyboard)

ladies gentlemen cyborgs and all combinations thereof welcome to voidstar lab over the last month i've been sketching schematics printing parts crushing code and filling my scripts with all kinds of shameless plugs and i did it all in front of a live studio audience on twitch.tv zac friedman every monday and friday i was creating the mirage the mechanical keyboard of my dreams that's hackable it's clackable it's everyday practical it's got a minimalist 57 key layout a razer thin profile three clickable displays and a unique special ability the mirage is actually three different keyboards so out of the box the mirage is just your standard plank shape typing rectangle in the ortholinear grid layout that is strictly superior to staggered fight me you can transform the mirage into a split keyboard by physically splitting the circuit board in half like with your hands but wait there's more you eat the left side of the mirage and it's all right you got the rage deck a standalone macro pad number pad stream deck i designed the keyboard exactly the way i want it and today's sponsor next pcb made it exactly how i designed it next pcb is the manufacturer that offers advanced options that other hobbyist level fab houses do not things like cutouts gold fingers cassellations metal core boards edge beveling if you can think of a circuit board they can probably fabricate it if you're sick of working around another pcb maker's restrictions or you're just looking for a deal use the link in the description to save a hundred bucks off your first order i hope you consider next pcb for your next printed circuit project even though the mechanical keyboard community is a a thing that exists and b it's surprisingly active most keyboards are still just a matrix of cherry mx switches wired to an arduino pro micro running qmk it's not that any of these are bad per se but they are severely outdated i aimed my first shot straight for the heart the switch has gotta go the cherry mx form factor is like decades old it is so popular and so iconic you can even buy humorously large scale models of it action that stack of switch cap and chassis is a real chunky monkey and even ones that aren't you know eight times normal size can easily lift your fingertips 30 or 40 millimeters above your desk that keeps your wrist cocked for hours and it's a great way to get stuff like rsi and carpal tunnel those towers of clicky power are so tall that most high-end builds brace them with a steel plate to keep them from wobbling so instead of inheriting decades of problems and clutches and hacks and fixes i just switched to low profile switches the kale chocks are so slim that the switch cap and pcb combined are shorter than cherry key switch alone [Music] now hold your horse's mid-50s crime-busting western television hero the lone ranger sure kale trucks reputation might be lower than the switches themselves but it's lies and it's slander you see the original chalks only came in three styles spongy and gritty but these are the third generation product and they are just as solid and smooth as their full-sized cousins checkmate atheists here's what's going into my prototypes the pro red linear keys are pre-lubed padded and smooth and the clicky robins have an insanely crisp break you can hear next door but i'm about to wrestle some jimmies that you didn't even think were rustlable i used io expanders instead of a matrix i want hate watching brooke it increases engagement i'm going to engage people through hatred see most keeb designers wire the switches into a grid you power one column at a time and then you check the voltage on each row if the key is pressed current passes from the powered column to that key's row that row's input line on the microcontroller detects that voltage and your cousin's data is named robert the purpose of this is to let you read a whole bunch of keys with very few lines of a microcontroller you only need one line per column and one line per row to read like you know 60 keys for a 60 keyboard for instance problem each switch is not just wired to the microcontroller it's wired to a whole row of switches so if a second key on that row is also pressed and a third key in the second keys column is also also pressed then you have just powered up a second row without pressing a second key in the active column see the microcontroller can't tell the difference between this back powered row and an actual key press so it gets as confused as a colorblind guy playing among us that sends the pc a keystroke that you never pressed these are called spooky ghost keys i'm a little spooped and if you want to bust them you just stick a diode in series with each switch that prevents current from flowing backwards from the row and powering another column and then you can read as many switches as you want it's cool engineering that makes the designer feel like a badass but you just doubled the number of parts and traces that you have to place route and solder i'm aware that soldering a diode is easy and i know the diodes are cheaper than chips but time not money and not engineering coolness is the most important priority in any hobby project even though i o expanders do cost a few bucks more they mean i can rout only a single trace per key there are only two parts that can be soldered backwards and as a bonus i basically designed the split version for free remember a successful matrixery calls for one wire each per row and column the left side has seven columns and five rows so have fun finding a 12 conductor cable that isn't literally a rainbow connection all i have to do is run i squared c power and ground through a headphone cable change nothing else and that's it other split cubes like my ergodox are so committed to using a matrix that they plunk an entire second microcontroller in the other half of the keyboard not only is there no way that's any cheaper or easier than just using an i o expander you've created a keyboard that needs two different firmwares running on two microcontrollers speaking of firmware imagine you're someone who doesn't know anything about programming like a web developer you've just finished soldering together your brand new shiny keyboard and you want to kick the tires or should i say click the tires get clack in the saddle smoke clack rocks start clacking cheeks before you do you gotta compile and download and burn the firmware using a pointlessly gendered programming tool that has like a million options and none of them make any sense and you have five serial drivers they're all in conflict and what the hell is exotic or maybe you're on linux and it's actually pretty easy on linux i guess it's the first time for everything no boy the qmk configurator why would i want to unswap backtick and escape why can i make a key serve double duty but only in these eight specific combos that involve parentheses for some reason how do i add a macro so i can spam call over at it you may not realize that the key maps and the firmware are separate files so if you program your keyboard but you forget to download the json as well then it's back to square one you loser i started from scratch i mean like i throw the entire c plus plus programming language the mirage is built on circuit pythons so the device shows up as a flash drive on your computer and all you have to do is drag one folder in there and your keyboard is ready to use i'm not going to say your grandma could do it because your grandma uses bing to google for yahoo so she can print her email while we're on the subject set up some filters on granny's facebook to block all that q anon bubba is gullible she was born before they invented gay people just open the keymap in any text editor tweak havoc and your changes will take effect as soon as you save if you want to remap a key just find its row and column and go for it multi-key shortcuts your internet smut is a mere two plus signs away you want some macro actions some action just type type type your string and i just realized that there is no pro social way to use this feature you can fire any combination of these just by string them together with commas and you can bind them to when a key is clicked double-clicked held and or released and all of this is pretty self-explanatory and i put examples all right there in the default files if you can't figure it out at this point like watch a michael ray's video micro center gave me this loop deck to speed up my streaming and cutting and the one thing that really shapes my nips is that these so-called display buttons aren't buttons at all this is just a touch screen with a thingy over it and i want to click an entire display the mirage or the rage if you're feeling snappy has these three oleds mounted to these wobbly diving board shaped cutouts the other side rests on a pair of tactile switches so you can click the entire display like god intended many quick turn pcb houses won't do inner cutouts like these especially on the extra stiff two millimeter fiberglass that makes this keyboard sturdy so this project would have been genuinely impractical to prototype without next pcb mid video plug like comment subscribe join the notification squad watch me on twitch what am i forgetting buy my merch oh this isn't my merch but by my merch for the brains i picked no not the tnc that's like hammering a nail with the death star i equipped the mirage with the seed studio xiao rp 2040 a adorable super tiny raspberry pi pico the arduino is ancient history and even though the elite sea adds yes the greatest data transfer port in the known universe it's the same wimpy chip running the same crap underneath this thing runs at 125 megahertz has a full megabyte of flash costs five bucks has the most excellent uf2 bootloader and it's casselated pads give my stacked up board a lower profile than using pin headers of course it's usbc the do you think i am see if i were building this just for myself i would have just made a split keyboard and left it at that but my goal is to make this for you to use and the keyboard you probably want to use is a plank or a number pad i decided to split the difference and take techniques invented for mass production put them to work to create one board that serves the role of three these little tabs with holes on each side are called mouse bites they make it easier to snap the board in half and they recess the little ragged splintered bits into the board that means there's no pointy debris to keep it from fitting into a case the top tab actually electrically connects the left and right halves you sometimes see this in production as well it enables the technician to test an entire panel of boards before they're even broken apart there are actually two more ways to connect these halves together these headphone jacks let you use an aux cable to get some distance between the split version and these right angle headers are here so that if you split the boards and you get second thoughts you can shamefully slide the halves back together and no one will be none the wiser i actually made a bunch of major mistakes with this board uh here's a particularly egregious one check out this part of the i o expander circuit i have vss connected to 3 volts and vdd connected to ground but this is wrong vss is the source and should go to ground vdd is the drain and should get the power this has nothing to do with how humans use these terms because they're named after the pins of mosfets who puts the drain on top what are the sinks that bell labs look like debugging this idiotic move wasted like three hours of stream time oh did i did i have it backwards yeah i guess that's uh i guess that's the problem good eye good eye penguin penguin cipher you're you're completely right these boards are worthless now that left me having to get creative with an x-acto knife to sever and reconnect those lines without shorting out innocent bystanders i also forgot to pull up the reset lines i also put screws under the bottom row of keys like a and i also missed an opportunity for making this compatible with cherry switches as well but all this is fine if you try to nail every single problem in one shot your project is never going to move forward on top of this you're going to discover new things to fix once you actually have hardware in your hands so budget time and cash for two iterations of every board don't try to be a perfectionist and use the link in the description to save 100 off them the 3d printed enclosure is really simple bottom plate adds stability and it keeps the pcb from shorting on desk debris an upper cover shields the circuits from spit takes and a magnetic applique reminds you who's buttering your muffin i built this keyboard for hackins so i added in heat set inserts instead of tapping straight into the plastic see you can screw and unscrew into brass indefinitely but plastic threads will eventually wear out and i want you to build and break this thing all the time i broke this in two because this is your project it has to fit your printer yes i could have just split this straight down the middle and used the same bottom plate for the split and regular versions but i know you're going to print this in pla and that doesn't glue very well this jagged wavy edge increases the surface area which both creates more of a mechanical connection and lets you spread on more adhesive as for the split version i basically just took the full size one cut it in half and mirrored the details on the edges hooray for fusion 360. the problem with fusion 360 was literally everything else anyways this cube is far from done but i can't bring it much further until it gets some good old-fashioned field testing did i mention that you're going to find some problems with the hardware when you're testing as well what i'm saying is plan on making multiple revisions of your boards i'm going to eat my own dog food and make the mirage my daily driver but if you are interested in being an alpha tester feel free to reach out using for instance the comment section for instance you can also watch the making of this project via the playlist in the description and witness live hackery with alive zachary on twitch.tv zack friedman you patient few who are still watching may have noticed this flavor text it's not just there to make the keyboard say one thing when it's together and another thing when it's apart i put hours into it i want recognition i plan to follow this up with a standalone raspberry pi mini tablet and then a high capacity battery pack and all three will combine to create the feta morgana cyber deck so if you want to see this thing come together i sincerely recommend clicking that button and then clicking that other button you know the buttons mucho thanks so to the patrons who keep the lights on while i light up the oleds deluxe thanks large drink side onion rings to our collaborators chuck vaduk small dong command reagan says i went to a beekeeper and bought a dozen bees he gave me 13. he says the extra one is a freebie brian d swollen nut jeremy arnold schwedivage and long time supporter i'm not bettacore i've hidden their profoundly silly names in this very video can you suss them out i also hid their names in the project itself finally let's get personal with the lab assistants these excellent supporters include the world's greatest drone pilot buck grinder fpv bill schooler blm and friends connor barnes eddie rusty flute nathan johnson i refuse to read this guy's name out loud bob dobbington curb joe wilkinson e pun man joe harp chronome hackerspace brussels hsbxl xenforian zach mark whittington ethan gomez phillip whose name is now pink brad cox frantic fanatic powerful cch sxp 410 100 a blade of kitten duck distribution specialist and a choir of stickers taranak tkmk olivier yipdong cats period clots roger pinkham of the great star theater in san francisco's chinatown that i remembered this time aero raider sea harris my yadashima trans rights tinkerbear aiden p protagonist lydia k kevin de graaf my dog is a bear yeah kinda azondo sa-6h-a-m zoster nino-ganzatano acalia insert duck joke here clunge bob squirt pants victor vaughn michael roche it's 20 21 and i still go to my little pony conventions one handful of beans guy gasm the antifa varka sir derpington of dubtopia good suck talon democratic socialist and pretty righteous dude and all's well that ends daniel cadwell thanks for watching and i hope to hear your keyboard clackin in the future i think the nsa is watching me right now but not because like i'm doing anything wrong because they just think i'm really entertaining i mean it's a really good show everything's fine we don't do anything wrong we don't do anything wrong we're perfect that's it we're done we're done for the day i'm cutting you off i'm cutting you off

Channel: Zack Freedman

Views: 284,148

Keywords: DIY, zack friedman, zach friedman, zach freedman, voidstar lab, voidstar labs, 3d printing, 3d printed projects, diy projects, mechanical keyboard, mech keeb, what is ghosting, how does a keyboard work, kailh choc keyboard, cherry mx suck, raspberry pi pico projects, diy mechanical keyboard, mirage, rage board, fata morgana cyberdeck, custom circuit board, diy pcb, zack freedman projects

Id: Fg0V5M0llaE

Length: 16min 30sec (990 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/drashna]

Yeah, this video kind of dropped my opinion of him.

'Teensy 4 is overkill, so RP2040 instead`, shitting on qmk because he was using very old instructions... Also, using circuit python over something that is meant for keyboards ....

[u/IkillThee]

I had to subscribe when he said Web Devs don't know shit about programming. (6:15)

[u/OrsonZedd]

Think about this every few weeks. I'd really like this, especially if I could use an extra right half to build one with a keypad.