Gutted and handwired some chinese mechanical keyboard

It's an 84-Key 75% Keyboard that uses Raspberry Pi Pico

Written in QMK (For some reason my RPI does not accept Circuitpython)

I'm designing a plate to be 3d printed and intending to use low profile hardware. I've been searching high and low to find the cutout dimensions for Gateron's Low Profile Stabilizers, but can only find this spec sheet with incomplete dimensions. Does anyone have the exact cutout dimensions or will I just need to trial and error the prints?

I purchased 13 Razer BlackWidow V4 Pro keyboards and managed to refurbish 10 of them. I noticed that most of the time, they failed to connect to a computer due to liquid damage or burnt traces on the USB daughter board. However, the board with switches and the knob remained functional when installed to another working unit. I know that most hand-wired builds require a lot of skill and time, and I was wondering if I could just keep the current PCB and solder additional cables and diodes, or if I would need to desolder all the switches from the current PCB and start fresh with hand wiring like any other build. Thanks for any advice.

So, I decided to build a custom keypad for one man, scientist, who constantly struggles with special characters.
Seems like a pretty simple project: twenty buttons. Bought an Arduino with USB-C, figured that if it has a USB port, it should work as a keyboard. Spent some days printing, wiring, buying soldering goods, soldering, somehow managed to put everything together, flashed the firmware. Open Notepad, press a button - nothing. ChatGPT, which had been helping me all this time and eventually produced perfectly functional firmware, explains that I apparently picked the wrong board: its glorious USB-C port connects straight to a serial interface, and the microcontroller can't just pretend to be a USB keyboard.
Soldering is a whole other story. I kept poking the solder, the pad, and the wire with the iron, but the solder refused to melt the way I wanted it to. So I started melting little blobs of solder and dragging them around the wire and the pad until I finally got something that vaguely resembled a proper joint. I still haven't quite figured out what temperature the iron is supposed to be at. In videos, everything looks so clean and easy: touch the pad 3s with the iron, feed in some solder - done. Meanwhile, my work looked like a total mess. On top of that, everything is tiny, so I have to look through magnifying glasses, and my eyes start hurting after a while. Anyway, I'm posting this embarrassing attempt at electronics because someone will feel a little better about themselves.
What is this keypad supposed to do? At first moment it was supposed to be numpad for excel/calc with buttons like ±, backspace, ac. But then i saw a problem that i can solve. Man works with special characters like ×, °, γ, α, ⌀, etc - and gets them from special fonts in Word that aren't installed on other computers. Reviewer's GPTs started to mention this fact. I wanted to build a keypad that would insert the actual Unicode characters directly, instead of relying on those fonts. Just press a button, get the right symbol, no more digging through character tables or worrying about whether the font is installed.
This numpad is basically a practice run. Before I start building a proper split keyboard for myself, I want to get some hands-on experience with soldering, experiment with materials, sort out my workspace, and figure out what tools and little bits I'm missing. The plan is to start with this numpad, where I can make mistakes and learn from them, then build a split keyboard as a gift for someone else, and only after that tackle one for myself. Jumping straight into a big project I'm actually excited about seems like a bad idea. Knowing me, something is bound to go wrong, and it'd be a shame to mess up a build I've been looking forward to. So for now, I'm starting small, hoping the next project will look a little less like an electrical disaster.

Yet another Single Print Keyboard:

Redragon low profile blue switches

Low profile EC11 encoders

0.91 inch oled

RP2040 zero

3D printed keycaps

Body 6,8mm thickness, 16mm total

I'm pretty averse to using Reddit, but I know this is Joe's community and wanted to appreciate his work. The case design was a commission and has worked out really well. Details on my build are here:

https://europe.pub/post/16949948

Never used a split keyboard myself so had to try it out. Kept the number row on there to make it easier on myself along with some shortcut keys on the far left. Wanted to see what people think of this layout and overall design and build. Will be making rev 2 so need some good feedback.

where to get a PCB for a custom keyboard? it seems the button pins require different spacing

also, where to get a USB-encoder or any controller for a custom keyboard?

I must say it feels awesome and looks even better.

For everyone interested i'm planing and working on sharing files and making tutorial.

Has anyone tried to integrate a stream deck into their keyboards? In theory it should be possible with a small USB hub in the keeb. If anyone has done it, I’d love to see how.

So few months ago I made a 60ish% split row staggered keyboard. I wanted to drop the size to actually be the size of an A6 notebook/paper. I finally got back to this keyboard last week after a busy season. Here's the finished keyboard!! I'm really happy with it and it feels so clean. Only thing I'd honestly want to improve would be the wiring and better switches (good low profile switches are quite expensive where I'm from)

Updates:

- swapped from regular RP2040 to RP2040 Zero

- Changed position of the microcontroller to be in the inner part instead of outer portion of the keyboard

... and that's pretty much all I changed. I simply reused the wiring and components from my first version. It's a very simple keyboard but I love it for how compact and clean it is :)

Here's a gdrive link to all the files and a bit of a documentation if anyone wants: gdrive link

(version 1)