Cyberdeck Se7en

Remember: Se7en is pronounced Sesevenen.

Just a quick catch-up. I've been doing bits and bobs with the case; it looks stupid at the moment because there's three different colours of filament involved from four supplies but hopefully after some filler, primer and paint that won't be an issue. (My black filament ran out so I whacked the orange one in to finish the job, then finished off a roll of white and started a new one.)

I think I'm going to leave the printer idea, because frankly there's no space now; it's already going to be more or less square, like a BBC Micro, and having the printer as well would make it unfeasibly thick as well. (Imagine another panel at the back the same depth as the white panels and that's probably about the depth.)

I like the OLED and touchpad in those positions. The row of switches will allow things to be switched on and off individually (especially helpful when on batteries) and add a little more texture.

I printed a new 1.75u shift key in black PETG and used yellow acrylic paint for what you might call a decal if it hadn't been moulded into it. It accidentally looks like a KLF thing with that font, so I'm thinking of doing some more - that left Ctrl key looks weird because it's labelled with a label printer, so I may as well make a new one!

I've started out on the USB keyboard code but have a load of bugs in it that I need to figure out. I'm not that happy with the library that I'm using and getting the superior Adafruit TinyUSB library working has been frustrating in PlatformIO (I don't want to use the Arduino IDE if I can help it). I've already forked it to allow for a UK keymap so I might go further and make some fundamental changes for this.

Inspiration

This caught my eye last week...

Not only is that the same printer as I've been umming and ahing about building in, it's also got the same battery pack as I've got and the handmade mechanical keyboard is using a Raspberry Pi Pico, the same as me! The synchronicity is astounding. (Of course, I wouldn't go for a keyboard layout like that; weird layouts like that aren't my thing. Muscle memory demands a normal, staggered keyboard layout...)

Anyway. That'll do pig. Until next time!