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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Just got my Ambient Twilight silent choc switches in! These switches feel incredible. I’d been running tape/floss modded Red Pros up until now. Their sound is similar depending on how well you did the mod, but they always felt disappointingly mushy. The Twilights are even quieter and have a nice satisfying linear feel. They’re definitely quiet enough to start bringing to the office more regularly.

    The keyboard’s a variant to last year’s TypeBoy. A pair of modded Game Boy Advance cartridges house a custom PCB, XAIO BLE, shift register, and Sharp Memory Display. (When you don’t accidentally crack one during installation. Whoops.) The Mark II trades the staggered column setup for an ortholinear layout with an offset mod row. The new shape helps channel the handheld vibes a bit better. I went with a PCB stack this time for the case. Partially to try something new, partially to hide the bright Pro Red switches. I’ll have to let the Twilights shine a bit more on the next revision.









  • There’s a whole linage of arcade game button design, but you occasionally see keyboard switches show up in custom fighting game sticks.

    Mice and trackballs often borrow from the whole universe of buttons to make their sculpted formfactors work. I feel like I’ve seen one or two with mechanical keyboard switches in them.

    Like rockSlayer mentioned, they just bridge a physical connection between two pins and can technically be used anywhere a typical button could be. Keyboard switches are so optimized for their large square footprint and particular travel distance that they’re usually not the best fit for random industrial needs. You could make an elevator control panel out of key switches, but there’s probably a cheaper, more well suited button you could use instead.





  • Did you design a schematic or define nets using something like Ergogen? Schematics/Nets provide you with those little white lines defining, “These two pins should connect on the same circuit.” After you’ve traces all the routes to connect your components together, DRC will tell you if you missed a connection, or if two things are connected that shouldn’t be. It’ll also give you warnings like traces being too close to the edge of the board.