A simple, wireless, 75% keyboard! Not too big or small. It runs ZMK.

My first exposure to keyboards was through Hack Club's #hackpad, in which I made a 5-key macropad with an encoder and screen. I've never had a regular mechanical keyboard, and this is my attempt at making one. It has a function row, all the necessary keys for typing, and a rotary encoder. Since I mainly use a laptop, I wanted this keyboard to be fully wireless.

After watching many Joe Scotto videos, I came to the conclusion that the only reasonable microcontroller to use was the nice!nano v2.

It's suggested to run ZMK as the firmware for bluetooth, so I learned ZMK for this keyboard. Previously I've used QMK, but ZMK is quite different as it uses a Github Actions workflow to compile the firmware file. The firmware for this keyboard lives in this repository. Simply go to the Actions tab, open the most recent workflow, download the firmware Artifact, unzip the firmware, and flash it to the nice!nano.

All the source files for ZMK are in the /Code folder in this repository.

I made the PCB in KiCad, using Joe Scotto's symbol/footprint/3D model library.

It was really helpful as his footprints had 3D models linked to them, because it transferred into Onshape when I worked on my CAD. I included a power button to turn off the keyboard when I travel with it, and an encoder for good measure.

I chose to go with the biggest reasonable battery for this project, so I chose a 3048128 3400mAh battery. According to the ZMK Power Profiler, this keyboard will last 1 year and 1 month. So basically forever. And ZMK can report battery usage over bluetooth, so this keyboard will literally never die.

The PCB files are in the /PCB folder, including the KiCad source files and the Gerbers for production.

As mentioned above, the CAD was made in Onshape. The case has two parts, both of which are in the /CAD folder along with the STEP file of everything. It's meant to be 3D printed and screwed together using threaded inserts and M2 screws.